The subconscious - seat of language ; decision-making & emotions

But Freud spoke of the subconscious as being 'irrational, lustful and hallucinatory'.




Then why bother?

The concept of 'the subconscious' has evolved over time. 

Where early thinkers felt it was relevant only in the context of people suffering mental problems

The motivational researchers of yesteryears perceived people to be ruled by insecurity and motivated by erotic desires. They attributed sexual motives to rather prosaic consumer purchases

Modern thinking on the subconscious is more holistic

Subconscious = reservoir of thoughts, feelings and emotions that are below the threshold of consciousness

It has an important influence on motivations and regulates involuntary action

It is relevant (for marketers) since it helps understand

•  Emotions
•  The frame of reference within which consumers cast products / brands & how?
•  The meaning that consumers attribute to brands &
•  The REAL NEEDS that brands serve (as opposed to stated)

This article in the June 2015 online edition of Time sums up the thinking on the conscious & the subconscious mind and the role that each one performs in our daily decision-making

In a new paper published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a group of researchers led by associate professor of psychology Ezequiel Morsella of San Francisco State University, took on the somewhat narrower question of exactly what consciousness is—and came up with a decidedly bleaker view: It’s pretty much nothing at all.

Nearly all of your brain’s work is conducted in different lobes and regions at the unconscious level, completely without your knowledge. When the processing is done and there is a decision to make or a physical act to perform, that very small job is served up to the conscious mind, which executes the work and then flatters itself that it was in charge all the time.

The conscious you, in effect, is like a not terribly bright CEO, whose subordinates do all of the research, draft all of the documents, then lay them out and say, “Sign here, sir.” The CEO does—and takes the credit.

There are deep evolutionary reasons for things to work that way. Humans, like all animals, operate as parsimoniously as possible; if we could be run entirely by our reflexes and instincts with no conscious thought at all, we would. There’s a reason you don’t stop to contemplate whether you should pull your hand off a hot stove, and instead simply do it. Consciousness in that case would just slow things down.

The authors cite language in particular—a human faculty that is considered perhaps our highest and most complex gift—as one more area in which consciousness is just a bit player. You may be the world’s finest raconteur, but when you’re speaking you’re only consciously aware of the few words you’re saying at any one moment—and that’s only so you can direct the muscles that make it possible to form and express the words in the first place. All of the content of your speech is being pre-cooked for you before you say it.

Think about it…

Most of the research done with consumers is in the conscious frame of mind. If decision making and even the language used to articulate those decisions is not controlled by the conscious mind – then what we understand as marketers is only a fraction of the consumer’s reality.