Many of our social institutions -- and laws in particular -- implicitly assume that human actions are largely the product of conscious knowledge and intention, willpower and education.
It turns out that the most important aspect of being a law-abiding citizen is the ability to understand social rules. We don't avoid shoplifting merely because we consciously know it is wrong, or because it is against the law. Most of us don't shoplift because our unconscious brain tells us it is a violation of rules of social interaction. It is the fear of social opprobrium -- the contempt of store clerks and security officials and fellow customers if we should get caught, or the shame that would befall us if our friends and colleagues learned about our actions -- that keeps people honest, not all the laws in the world.
It doesn't feel that way, of course. It is only when we see patients with a disorder such as frontotemporal dementia that we realize that most of us can claim very little credit for our conscious notion of morality. Patients with frontotemporal dementia don't stop being able to tell right from wrong; they simply stop caring about shame and social opprobrium.
One study of sixteen patients with frontotemporal dementia found that among them, the group was guilty of "unsolicited sexual approach or touching," hit-and-run accidents, physical assaults, shoplifting, public urination, breaking into other people's homes, and even one case of pedophilia. The patients readily acknowledged their actions were wrong -- but showed no remorse. They knew they were breaking the law, but it didn't matter to them.
It seems obvious when you think about it, but it was really important for me to hear that our unconscious and conscious systems learn pretty much independently from one another:
We have two systems of learning within our heads that develop more or less independently, and we pay almost no attention to one of them. Our society resolutely believes the conscious mind is all that matters, and so all our educational and legal efforts focus on it. We have schools with multicultural messages and rainbow flags. We have organizational experts who preach the importance of sensitivity and understanding. We have laws to punish hate crimes. Many of our interventions are based on the belief that prejudice involves conscious intention or hostility, that it is largely the result of ignorance, and that education is the best way to overcome it.
As you can see from Frances Aboud's work, each of these beliefs is wrong in a fundamental way. The children were not being taught by their teachers that whites were superior to blacks; all the efforts at the school were trying to communicate tolerance, not prejudice. Separate from what the children were learning consciously, however, they were unconsciously learning something else altogether.
