So given those two experiments we've just discussed it looks like there is some empirical evidence for the unconscious mind, for the occurrence of unconscious phenomena. And there are many other examples that Wilson cites, and there have been plenty more produced since the publication of that book that posit the existence of unconscious phenomena. That is the positing of which is the best explanation for the data in question. Nothing special or spooky or mysterious, nobody accuses you of repression or resistance if you challenge the experiments. That is just this just science providing evidence of phenomena, just as earlier we were offering evidence that supported the hypothesis of plate tectonics. So contemporary cognitive scientists want to offer evidence that supports the hypothesis of unconscious processing. Notice that this will have some implications for unconscious desires, such as those towards sexuality and violence, but there won't be any special focus on those. In that respect, Wilson and other colleagues will be breaking ranks with Freud for whom sexuality and violence was at the core of our unconscious minds. Wilson and colleagues don't want to rule that out. But they don't think that that's all there is. Unconscious processing is important for language and negotiating our way through a geographical environment and face recognition and proprioception, etc. The case that we've considered thus far. Another important part of what happens at the unconscious level according to Wilson and colleagues, is what he refers to as the psychological immune system. Just as we have a physiological immune system that allows us to fend off diseases as they make incursions into us through germs. So to the psychological immune system, is what Wilson wants to propose, is that we've got a system that allows us at an unconscious level that allows us to fend off attacks on our self-esteem, on our self respect, on our ability to be happy with ourselves and to get others to be happy with us as well. So, this is represented as he suggests in for example, the famous novel Jane Eyre, the heroine, she started out as an orphan, She was first taken in by Mrs. Reed who when she was a child was quite mean to her. Jane Eyre finally leaves, goes off to a home for girls, Makes something of her life and then visits Mrs. Reed on her deathbed. Bronte, the author, describes the situation as follows quoting the heroine Jane Eyre, "I knew by her stony eye," referring to Mrs. Reed, "I knew by her stony eye, opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears, that she was resolved to consider me bad. Because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure, only a sense of mortification." End of quotation. The idea that Bronte is suggesting is that, Mrs. Reed had a vested interest in continuing to be sure that Jane Eyre was a bad person because even though the evidence was to the contrary, had she accepted that Jane was not a bad person, It would have been mortifying to her. She would have had to admit that she'd made a grave error back many years ago. Doing that would have called into question her own status as a reasonable, decent individual. Rather than do that, She insists to her dying breath, with her stony eye that Jane Eyre is a bad person. We've got everyday experience of this, I think in many, many areas of life. When we say sour grapes, when we say, I really didn't want that job, it was stupid, I didn't want to get into that law school, I didn't want to get into that med school, I don't like that city anyway. That's an application it seems. In the case in which our psychological immune system is working because it protects our self-esteem. It allows us to deal with rejection by saying, "Ah, the source of that rejection doesn't really bother me. That rejection is not a big deal because I wouldn't have gone there anyway even if they had accepted me." Or you might once your life have been turned down after you had made a romantic overture to someone and it's very natural to respond to that rejection by saying to yourself, "Oh, that person was probably intimidated by me." Or "That person doesn't have good taste anyway." Various things that we do to spin the negative things that happened to us are ways Wilson wants to suggest, are activations of the psychological immune system or an experience I've seen many of my students over the years say things like the following, when they don't turn in a paper on time or they just finished at the last minute or some other assignment. They say, "I'm sorry professor. I know, I'm such a flake. I'm a loser, I'm disorganized and so on. Sometimes I've thought of the student in question. Well, sometimes being flaky, sometimes being disorganized, sometimes doing things at the last minute allow you to protect your self-esteem in the following way, if you don't get as good a grade as you might have hoped for. You can always say, "Well, that's because I waited till the last minute." But it might be that if you keep on again and again waiting till the last minute, not learning your lesson, It might be that there's a vested interest there, something about yourself that you're trying to protect. That might be the following. It might be that if you were to do your absolute best, start working on the paper well beforehand, do your absolute best on the problem set, whatever it may be. You put yourself at risk because that's your best work and you don't get a top grade. It'll be very natural to look at that result and say, "Okay, that's the best I can do. I've just seen my limitations." We can harbor beliefs about our talents by never putting our limitations to the test. That's another application of the psychological immune system. Another example that's been in the press lately is the phenomenon of humble bragging where someone might for example tweet or put on Facebook or some other public venue something like a complaint. They're griping about something, but underneath that griping is a certain amount of self-promotion as well. They might not be aware of the fact, But for example, when somebody says, "Oh, it's so annoying, all I want to do is go to the convenience store and buy myself something to drink, that people start trying to ask me out on a date," and so on. That is a bit of a complaint, but it's also a way of bragging about their attractiveness for example. So now, these are also ways of protecting our self-esteem by pumping ourselves up or protecting ourselves from having our self-esteem attacked because of various criticisms or challenges that we get from others. So these are applications of the psychological immune system. The ways in which Wilson wants to say, "We spin things in one way or another in order to aggrandize ourselves." As such, the idea of each of us having a spin doctor is not necessarily a bad thing. Each of us wants to project a good image in order to be socially accepted, in order to be socially successful, in order to think well of ourselves as it were, present ourselves in a positive and attractive light. But of course, one can only take that so far. What Wilson describes as the one of the �fundamental battlegrounds of the self�. I think is a fairly insightful remark on his part because on one hand, we want to spin things in our favor and on the other hand there's such a thing is the reality principle, where too much spin makes us completely out of touch with reality and then your life will probably spin out of control as a result. So if you, for example, are trying to make it in a career, for example, acting. Every time you don't get a role in a play or a commercial or a movie or a TV show, you might say, "Well, they're just threatened by my incredible talents and that's why I didn't get the role. I'll keep on trying." Well, it's good that you want to keep on trying. But if that happens again and again, it might be time and after a couple of years of continuous failure to not interpret the failure in a way that involves spinning. That does not involve the application of the psychological immune system and accept the facts through life and embellishing a little bit in order to make your self-esteem and your self-conceptions a little more rosy than the actual facts. To Justify, to a certain extent that might be reasonable, but we need to balance that out against the fact that there is a reality that it's up against.
