Inside, Everyone Is a Cinema

Published in: Morf 17, 2013, p. 33-46

The subconscious is a relatively new invention. At the end of the nineteenth century, Sigmund Freud began to study this wonderful part of our mental household that turned out to have such a deep and mysterious influence on our behavior. Since then, the study of human psychology and the human brain has come a long way. Using brain scans, neurologists map the activities of our brain, revealing more and more about the way it works. For designers, this can be useful knowledge.

The human brain consists of three evolutionary ‘layers’ that are interconnected, but sometimes also operate totally independent of each other: the brainstem and thalamus, the emotional brains, and the cerebral cortex (neocortex). The brainstem and thalamus are known as the ‘reptilian brain’; their evolutionary age is approximately four to five hundred million years. This part of the brains responds to stimuli in a purely conditioned manner. Here, fixed patterns of action are recorded that we perform without thinking, e.g. when playing a musical instrument, driving a car, or typing a text. This also is the home of Pavlov’s dog: the sound of a soda can being opened makes us feel thirsty. The emotional brains, also called the ‘mammalian brain’, are about two million years old. This part of the brain is able to learn; successful behavior is rewarded with a pleasant feeling and unsuccessful behavior with an unpleasant feeling. It allows us not only to play the successive notes of a musical composition, but also to play ‘with feeling’. The cerebral cortex, finally, is fifty to one hundred thousand years old (as old as mankind, uncoincidentally) and allows us to oversee complex structures, take long-term decisions, make rational considerations, learn intelligently, develop language, etc. All mammals have a cortex, but in humans it is the best developed by far.

Imagine your neocortex as a neatly raked front yard. Even though it’s your front yard, it’s actually part of the public domain. Your subconscious is a backyard – huge, private, disorderly and variegated. If you find yourself fed up with your anxiously maintained little front yard that can hardly be distinguished from the one next door, you could go on an adventure in your very own jungle, were it not that it is so impenetrable. Who knows, if you’ll ever be able to get out again.

The subconscious often speaks to us through the arts, as traditionally they are less strictly censored by common sense. Artists of all cultures and ages have used the subconscious as a source of ideas and images to feed their own and other people’s imaginations. And yet, we are never allowed to see more than a glimpse of what’s going on in our backyard. Our consciousness prefers to act as if it doesn’t exist, and although psychology and neurology have advanced considerably, the way it works is still in many ways a mystery. It is the domain of the irrational, which by definition lacks the logic we need to grasp it with our mind. Also, the mechanisms of the brain are strictly personal.

It does become increasingly clear, however, to what extent the subconscious influences our behavior. An excellent book supplying a great deal of brain research facts is Ben ik dat? (Is that me?), written by scientific journalist Mark Mieras [in Dutch]. For graphic designers it is nice to know that there is an area in the brain especially reserved for storing logos (p. 267), while for interior designers it is nice to know that there is one area where we record the route we have taken and from which we derive our spatial orientation (p. 60-63). For product designers, it is important to know how deeply rooted our tendency is to see facial expressions in just about everything (anthropomorphism), which is less trivial than it might seem.² It is especially interesting to know what mental mechanisms are behind all of this; how they work; how they can become disorganized; and how little influence our consciousness actually has.

“Inside, everyone is a cinema, he thought.”

W.F. Hermans, De tranen der acacias (1949)

The order in which certain interconnected processes take place inside the brains is a basic thing that neurological research can tell us. Our consciousness gives us the impression that we are busy making ​​a choice, while our brains are already executing this alleged command. Mieras:

“The consciousness does not choose, it witnesses the choice that the brains have made.”

A devastating insight! In retrospect we can rationalize these choices and create a (distorted) image of what happened. We believe that we have acted consciously, and often tell ourselves that we did it on the basis of rational arguments. In reality, the role of consciousness is limited and, worse, if we try hard to make a well-balanced, sensible decision, the results are often unsatisfactory.

“... The Amsterdam researcher Ab Dijksterhuis [...] let subjects choose between four cars. To make things easier for them, they only had to look at a limited number of objective criteria, such as legroom and gasoline consumption. The researchers made sure that one of the cars was objectively the best choice. After carefully weighing all the pros and cons, only a quarter of the subjects managed to choose the right car. They simply could not weigh all their arguments in a proper way.

              However, when Dijksterhuis asked the subjects to solve a puzzle first, in order to loosen up their brains a bit, and then cut the knot, the right car was twice as likely to be chosen.

              An experiment at IKEA yielded the same result. Dijksterhuis observed subjects when choosing a cupboard or a couch. As the researcher discovered, the longer they thought about it, the less satisfied they were with their purchase a few weeks later. Apparently, deliberation was only disruptive, because it made the subjects focus on certain aspects of the decision. When they did let go of finding arguments, they made a choice with which they were more often satisfied afterwards. [...]

We keep clinging to the conscious processes in the brains and worry a lot, while a walk in the park is often much more effective.” (Mieras, p. 298-299)

Even when making a choice from a limited number of alternatives, one of which is objectively the best, consciousness often does not succeed in finding the best choice. Let alone if there are a large number of alternatives, most of which differ only by subjective criteria. This is not only the case when people have to choose between designed products, but also while a designer is making a design. The design process can be represented as a sequence of decisions, choosing between different alternatives. Using your mind is probably useful to avoid blatant blunders, but otherwise it seems a lot better to trust your feelings, your intuition, your gut, your heart, or whatever you want to call it – that is what most designers do anyhow.

Our behavior is largely, or perhaps entirely, the result of how our brain is programmed and how we have processed previous experiences. This leads to the question of how much influence we have on the script of the film​​that is playing in our head. In other words, does man have a free will? Having the impression that we do is no proof. Whatever may be the case, things are happening upstairs that we sometimes seem to be able to influence, and sometimes not. For example, sometimes we consciously choose to let ourselves be inspired by whom or what we admire, but we are also exposed to many unconscious influences. Most of us will have experienced thinking we had come up with something new all by ourselves, only to find out that it already existed. The problem with unconscious copying (cryptomnesia) is precisely that it occurs unconsciously and is therefore beyond our control. Can that be called a crime – are we guilty of something? If so, was it force majeure, or negligence? As a designer, indeed you have your professional responsibilities. You should be well aware of what is ‘out there’ and it can be expected of you to be somewhat aware of what is going on inside your brain during the creative process.

The point is to be aware of your choices, your preferences and your prejudices. Of the difference between your personal preferences and general preferences. Of the difference between subjective arguments and objective arguments. A self-conscious designer knows this very well. Quentin Tarantino is not a virtuoso because he accidentally fills his work with references to other movies and genres. He is considered a great filmmaker because he does this intentionally, and knows how to put his own stamp on the result.

“You’re always on your own there. You always have the illusion that there is room for other people. But there isn’t.”

W.F. Hermans, De tranen der acacia’s (1949)

This is the continuation of the previous quote from the Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans, which not only implies that our brains are a kind movie screen on which our experiences are projected; also, we have to sit and watch passively, as if we have no influence on the script. Furthermore, Hermans also emphasizes that everyone is in his own cinema and real contact between people is impossible (solipsism). Because of the personal way the brains function, you can never know exactly what someone else perceives or experiences, even when you are looking at the same object at the same place and the same time.

This can cause problems if you work as a designer on a commission, because your client doesn’t particularly want to see you running through your backyard naked and screaming. Your client wants to deal with someone who thinks and acts rationally. He wants to be welcomed properly in your front yard. He wants objective criteria to judge your design proposal by and will ask for explanations. This is when most designers resort to ‘designing-in-reverse’, an a posteriori rationalization of the design process and rarely a truthful reflection of reality. (A lie, actually. For the good, you might say, but for whose good?)

The problem with trusting your intuition is not that it’s a bad method. There is no reason to believe that a purely rational approach (if possible at all) leads to better results. You need both. Only, there is so little you can say about subconscious processes, simply because they are unconscious and personal, while in the rituals of doing business, officially, only reasonable arguments are accepted.² Nevertheless, always be aware that the rational story is never the whole story. Both parties usually realize this to a certain extent, because the subconscious influences the client just as well as the designer. Both accept the ritual negotiations about a design proposal as a way to come to a mutual understanding. Arguments like, “I just think this is more beautiful”, are taboo because they are too subjective.

Designing in reverse is therefore a means of bridging the gap of solipsism with an appeal to the common basis of reasonableness.³ It is important not to underestimate this social mechanism. The after-the-fact rationalization of design choices is a reconstruction of an unconscious process, which is different from saying what you think someone else wants to hear, or blowing hot air. Design speaks more to the emotional brains and even to the reptilian brain than to the cortex. Otherwise, the man-made world would have been uniform long ago; in design there would be no room for individual expression, whereas the opposite is the case.

It is strange, and even somewhat frightening, to realize that you are exposed to influences from your own subconscious without ever being able to fully grasp them, and without being able to truly share your experiences with other people. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to use those influences. The unique way your brain works – your innermost being, that incomparable backyard – can be seen as a gift, the source of your creativity and originality, of your identity and authenticity as an individual. You can start using it once you become aware of the patterns in your preferences (leaving the deeper psychological explanations safely aside). It is all about listening carefully to the voice of your inner self and expressing yourself in accordance with what it tells you. Always realizing that other people are only interested in personal values to the extent that they give access to universal values, and magically create the feeling of a shared experience.

Notes

1 See: Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness (2006), Chapter III.

2 In Designing Interactions (2007) Bill Moggridge use this comparison: “Perhaps the mind is like an iceberg, with just a small proportion of the overall amount protruding above the water, into consciousness. If we operate above the water line, we only have a small volume to use, but if we allow ourselves to use the whole submerged mass, we have a lot more to work with. If a problem has a large number of constraints, the conscious mind starts to get confused, but the subconscious mind has a much larger capacity. Designers have the ability and the training to harness the tacit knowledge of the unconscious mind, rather than being limited to working with explicit knowledge. This makes them good at synthesizing complex problems with large numbers of constraints; it also makes them bad at explaining or defining what they are doing or thinking” (p. 650).

3 Don’t confuse designing in reverse with reverse engineering. In the latter case, you start from the intended end result to arrive by way of logical thinking steps at a constructive solution that is appropriate according to objective criteria.