OPINION23 March 2011
It won’t come as a surprise to those expecting the zombie apocalypse that the majority of the world spends its time wandering around with their brains in a state that requires very little, if any, mental activity.
Decode’s Phil Barden thinks that between 90-95% of activity is carried out while the brain is in ‘autopilot’, which isn’t surprising considering that serious thinking can consume up to 40% of the body’s energy.
Brains, Barden says, have evolved over the years to get by doing as little as possible, and its while they are in this autopilot state that researchers can get real insight.
Decode’s methodology is based on showing respondents images and words, such as a picture of a brand logo and the word ‘safe’, to provide an instant “gut feel” score.
But does the brain remain on autopilot when confronted by a word? Conquest’s David Penn doesn’t think so. As soon as the brain sees a word, it immediately switches to a cognitive mode that requires thought, he says.
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1 Comment
Phil Barden
14 years ago
We didn't have time to get into the details of this but the answer to David's question is 'no it doesn't'. The mistake in the question is to assume that cognitive = reflective. A lot of people don't realise that cognitive processing is heavily automatic - from perception, to many forms of learning and to memory and decision making. The easiest way to experience this is the Stroop task (you can find it online). It shows that language is processed automatically. You have to name the colour of the words you see. This is hard because of the interference of AUTOMATIC word processing. The guiding question as to whether something is autopilot or not: do you have more than 10.000 hours learning experience? If yes, it is going to be automatic, whatever it is (sports, language, brands etc.)
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