Our real choices are made without us realising them. But how?

First, a question. Do you think you consciously chose to be here, to be reading this article? You’re most likely thinking, well yeah, no one is forcing me, I chose to click this. On the surface, the answer seems as simple as that, but in fact, it’s much more complicated. You did make the choice to be here indeed, but if you believe that you consciously made this choice, on the spot, on your own, aware of all the reasons why you chose it, that’s where you’re wrong.

You see, your choice was already determined by all the little things that your subconscious picked up from your environment. The belief that you consciously made that choice is only an illusion because we don’t even realize those little things that actually lead us to make certain choices.

Freud actually proposed a model that explains this perfectly, referred to as the iceberg illusion.  According to this model, the choices we believe we make with full autonomy and awareness are only the tip of the iceberg, which represents our conscious mind. The hidden part of the iceberg represents the subconscious, and similar to how an iceberg works, the choices we think we make on the surface actually depend on what is hidden and stored beneath. 

Now, this might all seem blurry and hard to comprehend, so let’s just take a step back, and think, what is a choice, exactly? Choice, in simple words, is the ability to make a decision when you have two or more possibilities. On the surface, which is where our attention is most of the time, it seems like we do make choices every day. We might choose to have tea over coffee. When someone asks us, why did you choose to have tea, we might answer, because I like it more. But, why do you like it more? The truth is, we can’t possibly know the answer to that, because the factors that influence our preferences are deep in our subconscious.  

These preferences are based on two things, our nature and the environment. Nature, meaning our DNA, can determine how intelligent we are, and many other personality traits that have a biological origin. Environment, on the other hand, is the sum of our life experiences and upbringing. Every little thing we ever saw or heard. Neither one of those things, neither our nature nor our environment, was a choice made by us. If the preferences that lead us to certain choices are subconsciously influenced by things out of our control, then to what extent are we really making choices, when in reality all those choices originate from things that we are not even aware of? 

For some reason, it is very important for us to feel that we have a choice to be made freely. This is why people will fight and even die to have the right to have choices. The need to feel our choices are made freely without any influence is very strong because we think, what’s the purpose of life if I have no control over my choices? We tend to search for meaning behind life and our actions. Just to fulfil this desire and to prevent us from spiralling into negative thoughts, our brain creates the fake illusion that we make choices consciously. To illustrate this, I’d like to present you with an analogy. Imagine if every cell that makes up your body questioned its existence only to find that there’s no meaning, and stopped working. Then your body would collapse. So in their perspective, these cells are living their meaningless life without being aware of their role in the greater pattern in allowing the functioning of a body. Of course, a cell cannot actually ask the question “Why do I live?”. But this analogy allows us to see that just like cells, we might not see a direct purpose to our life, but we are programmed to do what we do just like a cell in the body, as a part of this universe. Now, as living beings that can actually ask this question, our brain makes up tons of scenarios and reasons, just to justify the choices we make. So it provides us with reasons, just to convince us that we have control over our decisions and to somewhat make sense of our life. 

We might be confident that we have not been influenced by something that did in fact influence us, or we can be equally confident that something that did not influence us did have an effect, but there’s no way of knowing the truth, because, underneath the myth of individual autonomy, every choice is victim to external and predictable influences. We’re not aware of the processes that underlie our judgments and behaviours, hence, our behaviour can be intentionally shaped without us realizing it. 

The initial counterargument our brain makes for this is that, if our choices are made unconsciously and our actions are pre-determined, then everyone could do anything and not take any responsibility. I could commit fraud and then argue that the choice was out of my control, right? Well, no. What is meant by unconscious choices is that we are not aware of the process behind our decision-making. It does not however imply that you are not responsible for them. Since we are the ones to choose and conduct that action, we still have responsibility for it. So, dear teachers that are reading this, do not worry, you can still hold your students accountable if they don’t hand in assignments on time.

You could also be thinking, if we don’t consciously make choices, then what differentiates successful people and unsuccessful people? Why do some people excel and some fail under the same conditions? What’s the purpose of trying then? Well, when we think deeper, we see that our choices are based on our preferences. Now go a step even deeper, what are our preferences based on? We certainly don’t choose to be born, to be born a human, to be born at this time in history, to this particular family… So, we don’t actually choose to be the person who went through the events that lead to the decision to work hard. We unconsciously pick up from whoever we are in contact with, or our environment. Now, this knowledge can be invaluable, because you can use this to your advantage to form the habits you want to form or make the choices you believe want to make. You can rig environments so that they include stimuli that will make people behave as you please, including yourself. 

A research paper by Johnson and Goldstein illustrates this beautifully. It shows how the percentage of people that indicated they would be interested in donating their organs change in different countries in Europe. This number was found quite low in countries like Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK, with numbers ranging from 4 to 28 per cent. In comparison, the percentage of people wanting to donate was considerably higher in countries like Sweden, Poland and France. So, what do you think is the reason behind some countries giving a lot and some countries giving a little? When I asked my friends, they all thought that it had to be about culture. But if you look at the data, you can see that countries that we think about as very similar in terms of culture, actually exhibit opposite behaviour. For example, Sweden and Denmark, which we think are culturally very similar, are on the opposite sides of the spectrum of data. So, what secret do the countries with high percentages have? What are they doing right? Turns out the secret has to do with the form’s default option. Some countries required opting-in to become a donor, while others presumed consent and required opting-out for those who do not want to be donors. Basically, one form said, "Check the box below if you want to participate in the organ donor program." What happened was that people didn’t check, and they didn’t join. The other form said  "Check the box below if you don't want to participate ..." When people got this version, they again didn't check, but they joined. The idea seems to be this: if the way in which a choice is presented makes such a huge difference in how likely people are to choose to donate or not to donate — it can be predicted what the subject will ‘choose’ based on how the situation is framed. So the person who designed the form has this huge influence on what you’ll end up doing, which only proves that we often have the illusion of making a decision, rather than an actual decision.

So how might we use this to our advantage in real life? Now, you might not ever be able to realize what goes on in your brain’s process behind choosing certain things, but if you are aware of the possible influence your environment has, you can then create the patterns that guide you. Do you want to start going to the gym every day? Prepare your gym bag and bring it with you to your work. You’ll most likely be going afterwards just because you have your bag. Do you want your students to be more active in class? Customize class activities to their interests, so when they think they want to be active because of themselves, they will actually be changing their behaviour simply because you changed the environment that affects their choices. We might not be able to see the hidden, subconscious part of our mind, but we can shape what goes in it!