Have you ever driven home from work or school and arrived at the driveway of your home only to realize you have no recollection of the drive home?

Perhaps you were distracted and thinking about the events of the day. Somehow you managed to get into your automobile, follow the flow of traffic and the traffic signals, make all of the right turns and left turns necessary at the appropriate streets, and then arrive at your house. You did so without getting into a car accident and without being stopped by the police for not following the traffic laws. This represents a fairly sophisticated sequence of operations and a detailed set of steps that were performed to get you home.

Yet there you are in the driveway of your home with no recollection of the process used to arrive there. How did that happen?

The answer is that you drove home subconsciously. Bargh and Chartrand

(1999) explain that most of the events which take place in our daily lives are managed by our subconscious (as opposed to our conscious) mind. Think about other things that you might do subconsciously. For example, have there been times that you brushed your teeth, took a shower, or got dressed without putting much thought into it? Once again, you probably did most of those things subconsciously. For things that you have done repeatedly, seen repeatedly, or discussed or thought about repeatedly, that information has accumulated over time and been stored away in your subconscious mind. It is recalled quickly and automatically the next time you need that information.

Research shows that only a small fraction of what is in the mind is in conscious awareness at any given time (Bargh, 2005; Gollwitzer, 1990). The rest is in the subconscious mind. Consequently, we do not always realize what we are doing because “. . . most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that . . . operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance” (Bargh &

Chartrand, 1999, p. 462).

Discussion Questions:

1. If the majority of the things we do in a given day are governed by the subconscious mind, what other types of things that we do in a given day might be done subconsciously?

2. Experts agree that subconscious processing happens very quickly and relies on information which is accumulated in the mind over many years and can be called on automatically when needed. What does this mean about the way that we treat other people? As we encounter others throughout the day, in what ways might the biases and stereotypes we have about various social groups be manifested?

3. Let us consider individuals who are either distracted at the beginning of the day or tired at the end of the day and their mind is in subconscious mode. They are in a public place and come across a member of a different racial group they do not normally interact with very much on a given day. They instinctively avoid the person, do not make eye contact with the person, and do not smile at the person or address the person. Do these nonverbal gestures have any impact on the other person? Does the fact that they were likely subconsciously driven in the mind of the actor have any less impact on the other person than if they had been done consciously by the actor?