How Does an Idea Form?
Part 1 — A Scientific Approach
Introduction:
We live in a time where the economy is driven and defined by the so-called knowledge economy. The industry of knowledge, the development of ideas, are what push a capitalist society to innovate and produce growth. So an idea has the power to define and shift the world on a macro scale, but the same idea has equal power to define an individual on a micro scale. An individual who has an idea rooted in their mind often utilizes both conscious and unconscious processes in pursuit of this idea — allowing the idea to be sufficiently important to that person. So ideas come to define us and our societies. They come to subsume our waking and sleeping thoughts. So naturally we must be careful of which ideas we deem to be valuable enough to pursue and dedicate these resources to. And we must know why they hold this value. But how does an idea take root? Where does it come from and how do we hold on to it? This question is integral to knowing how we may shape ourselves and the world around us.
Methods and Results:
An idea depends on many factors. The factors I have seen fit to tie together are threefold — consciousness, goals, and habits. The interaction of these three things create the fertile soil on which an idea springs. Tulving (1985) lays out an important framework with which to look at consciousness. While consciousness as a term is often used in literature, a structured framework with which to observe consciousness has not be clearly defined often in literature. Tulving lays out the important correlations between types of memory and consciousness and further explores this with an amnesiac patient and through experimental means. The theoretical framework important to understand off the bat is as follows:
Figure 1 -
There are three types of memory associated with three forms of consciousness. Each are correlated with one another and presence of the topmost row of memory/consciousness means the lower rows are present in an individual. This means that an individual with episodic memory (i.e. the remembering of personally experienced events) must also have semantic and procedural memory. Likewise an individual with only semantic memory (i.e. symbolically representable knowledge organisms possess about the world) must also have procedural memory (i.e. non-verbalizable knowledge such as riding a bike). These correspond with autonoetic (self-knowing), noetic (knowing), and anoetic (not-knowing) consciousness. It is established through free-recall, cued recall, and letter recall tasks of word association pairs that autonoetic consciousness is associated with episodic memory. Performance on recall tasks are associated with reported measures of “remembering” vs “knowing” an association and these values are correlated with the type of recall task to establish an association between episodic memory and solidify the threshold between episodic and semantic memory. This establishes that individuals are capable of knowing the same information as semantic knowledge but not remembering them as episodic knowledge. This paper establishes an empirical link between autonoetic consciousness and episodic memory. It also establishes that autonoetic consciousness and semantic memory can exist separately from noetic consciousness and episodic memory. It establishes a threshold degree in which episodic memory crosses over into semantic memory and lays a solid theoretical framework for further research and implementation. These experiments are fundamental in understanding the role of consciousness, its threshold values, and its functioning as separate modules while involving one another via levels of processing. They are important to idea formation in that it shows the importance of autonoetic consciousness in idea formation.
Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2000) present the value of habits and their activation of automaticity that is tied to goal-directed behavior. Essentially, they present the idea that habits, an unconscious process developed in association with a goal to minimize discrepancies between current performance and desired performance, can be activated unconsciously with significant results. They also show that planning of habituated actions for a scenario which still requires that habituated reaction does not benefit those who have already formed a habit. However, those who have not yet formed a habit benefit from planning of an action. Non-habituated planners react at the same speed to the action which is a habit for habituated subjects after exhibiting a planning stage requiring that action. Aarts and Dijksterhuis present important data for understanding the automated habitual responses developed for achievement of goals. These automated habits as shown by this research can be acquired through conscious planning and attention. This means that while an idea can be reinforced by existing habits, it can also be modified by planning and conscious attention.
This brings about questions of goal planning and how our goals, which define our habits, are set. Goals are dependent on a multitude of factors but can be broken down to rely upon the two ideas of self-focus and goal importance. While goal importance is relatively straightforward, self-focus is defined in the article as, “the degree to which individuals’ primary focus of attention is the self, rather than the environment.” Hollenbeck and Williams (1987) analyze the effects and interaction of goal performance, goal importance, and self-focus. They also examine two other hypotheses — the relation between goal levels, goal importance, and self focus; the relation between perceptions of past performance, goal importance, and self focus.
Their methods focused on performance of salespersons, selected and controlled for factors of variance, over a period of three months before the presentation of a questionnaire and three months after its presentation. The questionnaire gauged factors such as goal levels, perceived goal levels, goal importance, and self-focus. Goal levels and perceived goal levels were set in terms of daily sale expectations of which salespersons would have knowledge of due to commissions received. Goal importance was gauged by presenting scenarios in which subjects had to rate effort in which they would like to avoid or work for a given scenario. The factors considered in evaluating goal importance were subjects ratings of base pay, job security, nature of the work, co-worker relations, job performance, and supervisory practices. These factors were manipulated in scenarios and responses were used to gauge goal importance. This was based on a previously established measure. Similarly self-focus was evaluated with a previously established measure via a questionnaire of seventeen items.
Having established these baselines, subjects were gauged according to the following three hypotheses:
1. High performance in difficult goals happen with high goal levels, high self-focus, high degree of goal importance
2. High goal levels are set when there is high perceived past performance levels, high self-focus, high perceived goal importance
3. Perceptions of past performance will be most accurate if you have high self-focus and high perceived goal importance
The first two hypotheses were confirmed with significant interactions between high self-focus, high goal importance, and the corresponding third variable. In hypothesis 1, the most significant effect on goal performance was caused by goal level set explaining 16% of the variance in performance. The significant finding in this article is that individuals with high self-focus and high perceived goal importance as well as high goal levels performed the best. This finding held true for hypothesis 2 as well. See Figure 2 below:
Figure 2 -
Combined with people with high levels of perceived past performance, individuals holding high levels of all three qualities exhibited highest performance. The constant two factors boosting goal performance are high levels of self-focus and goal importance. The relationship between the above describe variables can be described diagrammatically as follows:
Diagram A -
Goal importance and self-focus are important low level features in boosting goal performance. perceived goal performance is an important higher level feature. This influences setting of goal levels which in turn influences goal performance. It is important to note that all links in this structure are two way in that goal performance can affect goal levels as much as goal levels can affect goal performance. This two way relationship is what allows for a powerful iterative feedback loop enabling us to constantly remedy essential components of the system for optimization. What is important to note in this structure is that the two constants, goal importance and self-focus, are factors controllable by the individual and the conscious mind.
Here is the link between autonoetic consciousness and goal performance as autonoetic consciousness allows the individual to be at the center of an experience thereby allowing the individual to adjust levels of self-focus and goal importance (both self-consciously directed entities). Habits are formed from self-focus and goal importance which are influenced by the presence of autonoetic consciousness. This establishes a new three way interlocked system out of which ideas form. This can be summed up diagrammatically as follows:
Diagram B -
Major Conclusions:
Habit forming, factors influencing goals, and authentic consciousness/episodic memory form an interlocking system out of which ideas are generated.
The Tulving 1985 article showed that:
- There can be “no such thing as remembering without awareness” (5)
- Confidence in a memory increases with its episodic level
- With increased autonoetic consciousness comes an increased confidence in that particular memory or piece of knowledge.
- Although tested a week later on the same recall tasks, subjects had significantly reduced number of recalled items that were remembered with episodic memory, those which were had a high confidence rating of 88% averaged across all remembered items
- Confidence level systematically decreased as episodic memory decreased and semantic memory increased.
- This shows the value of placing an “I’ at the center of an experience. We are selective and confident in information we choose to remember because of autonoetic consciousness and episodic memory. This makes this process useful for remembering valuable experiences or lessons for later use.
Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2000) established that:
- Habits, which serve as automated behavior to reduce discrepancy between goal state and current state, can be activated subconsciously
- With conscious planning habits can be acquired
- This suggests that with conscious planning habits can be effectively changed
- This can be achieved either through changing the goal or changing the habit to achieve the goal.
Hollenbeck and Williams (1987) established that:
- Discrepancy between goal and performance can be reduced by either trying to meet existing standards or re-establishing new standards. In other words meeting goal performance previously set or modifying goal levels.
- Across the board, it was determined that those with high self-focus and high goal importance performed the best — best being percentage increase in future performance compared to past performance
- Self focus and goal importance serve as the common ground factors which drive all other factors higher. See Diagram A for pictorial representation of all relevant goal related relationships.
Results can be summarized as stated before. Automated habits are formed from self-focus and goal importance which are influenced by the presence of autonoetic consciousness (Diagram B). In plainer terms, goal performance depends on unconscious automation, conscious manipulation of goals influence unconscious automation, these bring unconscious automation to the conscious mind, and conscious and unconscious forces are fundamentally influenced by levels of self-focus and goal importance. This whole system depends on the balance between the subjective “I” and the subjective identification with “Not I”. In other words, with a balance of the conscious and unconscious forces, identifying as I and knowing one is not I, and balancing between the present, past, and future bring about the conditions for growth. All these systems are engrained within us and require no effort to produce. From this balance comes the growth of productive ideas.
Areas for Further Research:
The question of goal performance without autonoetic consciousness is one which must be measured. It is important however to keep in mind that we cannot simply use objective measures for this as the perceived goal level is important in assessing how individuals with damage to autonoetic consciousness have performed on these goals.
It is also fruitful to further examine human development and observe how goals are set before development of autonoetic consciousness and how they are set after development. This would give us insight as to what kinds of goals are biologically important to humans without the onset of an “I” to say they are important.
Appendix:
Figure 1
Figure 2
Diagram A
Diagram B
Citations:
Aarts, Henk & Dijksterhuis, Ap. (2000). Habits as Knowledge Structures: Automaticity in Goal-Directed Behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology. 78. 53–63.10.1037/0022–3514.78.1.53.
Hollenbeck, J. R., & Williams, C. R. (1987). Goal importance, self-focus, and the goal-setting process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72(2), 204–211. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.72.2.204
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 26(1), 1–12. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0080017
