What is the adaptive unconscious? What role does it play in our decision-making?
Read “The Statue That Didn’t Look Right” and provide a medium-paragraph length answer to each question below (using full and complete sentences).
1. Numerous art experts who looked at the Getty’s kouros statue immediately thought it was not authentic. What are the specific impressions and feelings that they had which led them to this judgment? Why were these specific individuals able to reach such a reliable judgment in only a matter of seconds?
2. How was the University of Iowa card experiment set up? What were the results of the experiment? What does the fact that many test subjects started to react to the red cards after only 10 cards suggest to us? How is this example analogous to the Getty statue example? That is, what do both examples together tell us about conscious and unconscious decision-making?
3. What is the adaptive unconscious? What role does it play in our decision-making? What is the
difference between our unconscious mode of decision-making and our conscious mode of decisionmaking? When is the unconscious mode of decision-making more useful than the conscious model 2
4. Do you agree with the very last sentence of this reading passage? In your opinion, when is it appropriate or safe to rely upon our unconscious gut instincts, and when might it be more appropriate to rely upon conscious, deliberate reasoning?
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