Unconscious inference

Hermann von Helmholtz, a physicist and polymath, 1867 employed in the last volume of his important book Handbook of physiological optics with the psychological effects of visual perception.

The unconscious conclusion is a pre- rational mechanism of the visual impression formation, the imperturbable and incorrigible follows its own laws and exerts a domineering power over the human mind in this way. For example, we see how the sun every evening goes before our eyes behind the fixed horizon, although we know that they do not rotate around the earth, but the earth around itself Optical Illusions we can be made to disappear by no means by we convince ourselves in a rational way that we have made ​​a fool our eyes.

Also on the mutual perception of people practicing the unconscious inference from profound effect. Just the sight of our counterparts produced an emotional attitude that is not rationally justifiable and proves to be very resistant to any rational criticism. Apparently a spontaneous property write-up is set in motion, which we can hardly escape, because the human eye can not doubt. It may be so the impression created by the unconscious conclusion not help.

The reason for this can be found in the neurological processing of visual sensations. The higher cortical centers that deal with conscious information processing are not involved in the development of the visual impression. Because the process but arises spontaneously and automatically, we can not describe in detail what was going on in us. We take the eye things as if they were true, because the result of unconscious inferences are interpretations that our consciousness intrudes, as it were as an external power, about which our will has no force.

With these insights into the mechanisms of visual stimuli was Helmholtz science a century ahead. Newer concepts of modern authors approach the Helmholtz's perspective on such 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).