Subliminal summary

If you were to hear a loud, unexpected bang, the chances are that you would react instantly and jump out of your skin. That’s because when your unconscious mind perceives a threat it acts instinctively to keep you out of danger.

This subliminal awareness of the environment evolved in our ancestors long before conscious awareness. Its primary goal was to keep us alive, to avoid potential threats, and find food and mates.

Our bodies are just as expressive as our words. Without body language, we would find it hard to sense the intentions of other humans. For example, each of us has relied on body language to signal such things as potential threats, friendships and relationships.

We inherited body language perception from our distant ancestors, and it is as natural and essential to humans as it is for other animals.

Many people interpret evolution as telling us that men seek dominance and sex, while women want a loyal mate and babies. The evidence for this comes from analyzing our body language, especially the tone, pitch and volume of our voice.

Indeed, men and women unconsciously adjust their voice for sexual success.

However much we'd like it, our brains are not video cameras, recording everything for our later recall. The amount of information would be overwhelming to our brains.

Instead, our memory evolved to discard the majority of our experiences and save memories in general form – especially the important ones.

The human brain is not particularly adept at helping us understand our feelings and emotions. This is a legacy from evolution – the main drive of our ancestors was to stay alive and breed, not to comprehend themselves. This makes it hard for us to recognize and deal with our emotions.

This difficulty partly arises from the fact that our feelings are a product of our unconscious mind. Emotions work in the following way: the environment supplies data to our senses, to which our unconscious mind produces a physiological response. It is this response that we experience as emotion.

Our minds are made up of two opposing characters. We have our conscious mind, which thinks like a scientist – weighing up evidence and seeking the objective truth. Then there’s the unconscious mind, which acts like a lawyer – first making a decision, then defending its position.

Unfortunately for us, our lawyer brain is the stronger of the two characters. This leads us to support conclusions that affirm our beliefs rather than look for any alternatives. Also, this makes us adjust facts to fit viewpoint and ignore unfavorable evidence; this is an example of motivated reasoning.

In 1959, three mental patients who claimed to be Jesus were put in the same room together, to test how this would affect their self-perception.

When they were introduced, one gave up his belief and resumed normality, one accused the others of being deluded, while the third completely avoided addressing the situation. Unbelievably, in spite of the evidence, two of the three maintained their fantasy.

Before we are able to talk or even walk, we are attracted to friendliness and repelled by hostility. Babies like to touch the faces of people they see help others, and are repelled by faces whose owners hindered others. Research has shown this to be true even if the faces are fake – like bits of wood with eyes stuck on them.

This is evidence that it’s in our nature to socialize. And our brains are equipped with the hardware to help us do so.

Scientists and philosophers have long wondered how unique we are as humans. Certainly no other species shares our complexity or capability. Yet we aren’t as special a species as we like to think. Areas of our brain are governed by the same principles found throughout nature.

The behavior of both humans and animals is driven by brain chemicals. For example, the release of a few chemicals in the brain has the power to make us trusting. Yet we wouldn’t want too much of this, as we’d end up trusting everyone. So it’s a finite resource, switched on and off by nature.

Do you think you are fair and open-minded?

Many of us pride ourselves on having these qualities. Unfortunately, lurking beneath our surface are some murky prejudices.

We all have groups to whom we feel we belong. These are groups such as gender, nationality, politics and religious belief.

We switch our identities depending on the situation in which we find ourselves.

No one would think the weather or the pronunciation of a company’s name would affect the performance of stocks and shares. But they do. Companies whose name is harder to pronounce are more likely to fail than those whose name is easy to say.

Many of our purchases are made based on such trivial factors as this – factors of which we are unaware.

The main message in this book is:

We are unaware of the work that our unconscious mind performs all the time – for example, to avoid danger, find food or be powerful. It has evolved to work well, but it also means that we are unable to understand it, we fail to recall events that happened to us with accuracy, and we like people and objects because of superficial factors. We are prone to adopt an us-vs-them mindset, labelling anyone who doesn’t fit into our current group as worse than our own, or just all the same. Our self-perception is generous, while we gloss over our errors.