Here is one of the interesting psychology researches on our
brain.
Our Brains Can (Unconsciously) Save Us from Temptation.
Inhibitory
self control -- not picking up a cigarette, not having a
second drink, not spending when we should be saving -- can operate without our
awareness or intention.
That was the finding by scientists at the University of
Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They demonstrated through neuroscience research
that inaction-related words in our environment can unconsciously influence our
self-control. Although we may mindlessly eat cookies at a party, stopping
ourselves from over-indulging may seem impossible without a deliberate,
conscious effort. However, it turns out that overhearing someone -- even in a
completely unrelated conversation -- say something as simple as "calm
down" might trigger us to stop our cookie eating frenzy without realizing
it.
The findings were reported in the journal Cognition by
Justin Hepler, M.A., University of Illinois; and Dolores Albarracín, Ph.D., the
Martin Fishbein Chair of Communication and a Professor of Psychology at Penn.
Volunteers completed a study where they were given
instructions to press a computer key when they saw the letter "X" on
the computer screen, or not press a key when they saw the letter "Y."
Their actions were affected by subliminal messages flashing rapidly on the
screen. Action messages ("run," "go," "move,"
"hit," and "start") alternated with inaction messages
("still," "sit," "rest," "calm," and
"stop") and nonsense words ("rnu," or "tsi"). The
participants were equipped with electroencephalogram recording equipment to
measure brain activity.
The unique aspect of this test is that the action or
inaction messages had nothing to do with the actions or inactions volunteers
were doing, yet Hepler and Albarracín found that the action/inaction words had
a definite effect on the volunteers' brain activity. Unconscious exposure to
inaction messages increased the activity of the brain's self-control processes,
whereas unconscious exposure to action messages decreased this same activity.
"Many
important behaviors such as weight loss, giving up smoking, and saving money
involve a lot of self-control," the researchers noted.
"While many psychological theories state that actions can be initiated
automatically with little or no conscious effort, these same theories view
inhibition as an effortful, consciously controlled process. Although reaching
for that cookie doesn't require much thought, putting it back on the plate
seems to require a deliberate, conscious intervention. Our research challenges
the long-held assumption that inhibition processes require conscious control to
operate."
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