Subconscious Processing and Cognitive Automation
Alexander D. Stajković, Kayla Sergent · 2019
Subconscious and conscious cognitive processes are different, but they are part of one mind, whose unified purpose is to help survive and prosper. The conscious apparatus is at the surface of cognitive processing; it is the mental system at the intersection and the external world. On an evolutionary timeline, conscious processing is the latest add-on to our subconscious wheelhouse. How precisely the conscious and subconscious interact to influence thought and behavior is a weighty question in 21st-century psychology. The subconscious automates functions critical for survival and prosperity. The automation mechanism has been labeled differently across literatures, including terms like cognitive schemas, cognitive scripts, and cognitive categories. Interrelated stimuli and behaviors can be organized and connected in semantic networks. In organizational behavior, arguments in the early literature pertaining to subconscious and automaticity in human functioning were seen as too distal to be convincing and were eschewed by organizational scholars and managers.