Subconscious ending

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In 1867, Hermann von Helmholtz , physicist and universal genius , dealt with the psychological effects of visual perception in the last volume of his epoch-making work, Handbuch der Physiologische Optik .

The unconscious inference is a pre-rational mechanism of visual impression formation that unswervingly and instructively follows its own laws and in this way exercises an authoritative power over the human mind. For example, we see the sun setting before our eyes behind the fixed horizon every evening, although we know that it is not the earth that rotates, but the earth itself. We cannot make optical illusions disappear by we convince ourselves in a rational way that our eyes have fooled us.

The unconscious conclusion also has a profound effect on people's mutual perception. Just looking at our counterpart creates an emotional attitude that cannot be rationally justified and proves to be very resistant to any intellectual criticism. Obviously, a spontaneous attribution of properties is set in motion that we can hardly avoid, because the human eye cannot doubt . So it cannot avoid the impression created by the unconscious conclusion.

The reason for this can be found in the neurological processing of visual sensory impressions . The higher cortical centers , which deal with conscious information processing, are not involved in the creation of the visual impression. But because the process arises spontaneously and runs automatically, we cannot describe what has gone on within us. We perceive things with the eye as if they were perceivable , because the result of the unconscious conclusions are interpretations that impose themselves on our consciousness , as it were like an external power over which our will has no power.

With these insights into the mechanisms of action of visual stimuli , Helmholtz was a century ahead of science. Newer terms used by modern authors approximate the Helmholtzian point of view, such as snap judgments (Schneider, Hastorff and Ellsworth, 1979), nonconscious social information processing (Lewicki 1986), people as flexible interpreters (Newman. Moscowitz and Uleman 1989) and unintended thought (Uleman and Bargh 1989), as well as through the concept of related experience as about Gabler in the Springer economic ethics textbook individualistic business ethics (IWE) is shown.

literature

  • Wolfgang Deppert : Individualist Business Ethics (IWE) , Springer Gabler Verlag Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-03585-3 .
  • Siegfried Frey : The power of the image. The influence of non-verbal communication on culture and politics . Verlag Huber, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-456-84174-4 .
  • Hermann von Helmholtz , Jochen Brüning (ed.): Handbook of physiological optics (collected writings; vol. 3). Olms, Hildesheim 2003, ISBN 3-487-11878-5 (reprint of the Hamburg 1910 edition).
  • Pawel Lewicki: Nonconscious social information processing . Academic Press, New York 1986, ISBN 0-12-446120-4 .
  • Leonard S. Newman et al. a .: People as flexible interpreters. Issues from spontaneous trait inference . In: Advances in experimental social psychology . Vol. 28 (1996), pp. 211-279.
  • David J. Schneider et al. a .: Person perception . Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1979, ISBN 0-201-06768-4 .
  • James S. Uleman et al. a. (Ed.): Unintended thought . Guilford Press, New York 1989, ISBN 0-89862-379-0 .