|&j!y LE Lu;_O/h J0Professor Paul Bloom: I actually want to begin by going backto Freud and hitting a couple of loose ends. There was a point in mylecture on Wednesday where I skipped over some parts. I said, "We don'thave time for this" and I just whipped past it. And I couldn't sleepover the weekend. I've been tormented. I shouldn't have skipped thatand I want to hit--Let me tell you why I skipped it. The discussion Iskipped was the discussion of why we would have an unconscious at all.So, I was talking about the scientifically respectable ideas of Freudand I want to talk about some new ideas about why there could be anunconscious.
TC~\b t,E0Now, the reason why I skipped it is I'm not sure this is the bestway to look at the question. As we will learn throughout the course, byfar the vast majority of what our brains do, the vast majority of whatour minds do, is unconscious and we're unaware of it. So the rightquestion to ask may not be, "Why are some things unconscious?" butrather, why is this tiny subset of mental life--why is this conscious?On the other hand, these claims about the utility of unconsciousness, Ithink, are provocative and interesting. So I just wanted to quicklyshare them with you.心理学空间i^w.p/an"c AY
QcYh_|0So, the question is, from an evolutionary standpoint, "Why would anunconscious evolve?" And an answer that some psychologists andbiologists have given is deception. So, most animals do some deception.And deception defined broadly is simply to act or be in some way thatfools others into believing or thinking or responding to somethingthat's false.
~oY ~nY0There's physical examples of deception. When threatened,chimpanzees--their hair stands up on end and that makes them lookbigger to fool others to thinking they're more dangerous than they are.There's an angler fish at the bottom of the ocean that has a rodsticking up from the top of its head with a lure to capture other fish– to fool them in thinking that this is something edible and then tothemselves be devoured. But humans, primates in general butparticularly humans, are masters of deception. We use our minds and ourbehaviors and our actions continually to try to trick people intobelieving what's not true. We try to trick people, for instance, intobelieving that we're tougher, smarter, sexier, more reliable, moretrustworthy and so on, than we really are. And a large part of socialpsychology concerns the way in which we present ourselves to otherpeople so as to make the maximally positive impression even when thatimpression isn't true.心理学空间7a.{3l i D(M |p
n/c \,}\ y0At the same time, though, we've also evolved very good lie detectionmechanisms. So not only is there evolutionary pressure for me to lie toyou, for me to persuade you for instance, that if we're going to havea--if you are threatening me don't threaten me, I am not the sort ofman you could screw around with. But there's evolutionary pressure foryou to look and say, "No. You are the sort of man you could screwaround with. I can tell." So how do you become a good liar? And here'swhere the unconscious comes in. The hypothesis is: the best lies arelies we tell ourselves. You're a better liar, more generally, if youbelieve the lie that you're telling.
This could be illustrated with a story about Alfred Hitchcock. Thestory goes--He hated working with child actors but he often had to. Andthe story goes--He was dealing with a child actor who simply could notcry. And, finally frustrated, Hitchcock went to the actor, leaned over,whispered in his ear, "Your parents have left you and they're nevercoming back." The kid burst into tears. Hitchcock said, "Roll ‘em" andfilmed the kid. And the kid, if you were to see him, you'd say,"That's--Boy, he's--he really looks as if he's sad" because he was. IfI had a competition where I'd give $100,000 to the person who looks themost as if they are in pain, it is a very good tactic to take a pen andjam it into your groin because you will look extremely persuasively asif you are in pain. If I want to persuade you that I love you, wouldnever leave you, you can trust me with everything, it may be a superbtactic for me to believe it. And so, this account of the evolution ofthe unconscious is that certain motivations and goals, particularlysinister ones, are better made to be unconscious because if a persondoesn't know they have them they will not give them away. And this issomething I think we should return to later on when we talk aboutsocial interaction and social relationships.
One other thing on Freud--just a story of the falsification ofFreud. I was taking my younger child home from a play date on Sundayand he asked me out of the blue, "Why can't you marry your mother oryour father?" Now, that's actually a difficult question to ask--toanswer for a child, but I tried my best to give him an answer. And thenI said--then I thought back on the Freud lecture and so I asked him,"If you could marry anybody you want, who would it be?" imagining he'dmake explicit the Oedipal complex and name his mother. Instead, hepaused for a moment and said, "I would marry a donkey and a big bag ofpeanuts." [laughter] Both his parents are psychologists and he hatesthese questions and at times he just screws around with us.[laughter]