Future Minds Lab, School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
PLoS One. 2023 Jul 28;18(7):e0289313. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289313. eCollection 2023.
Subliminal information can influence our conscious life. Subliminal stimuli can influence cognitive tasks, while endogenous subliminal neural information can sway decisions before volition. Are decisions inextricably biased towards subliminal information? Or can they diverge away from subliminal biases via training? We report that implicit bias training can remove biases from subliminal sensory primes. We first show that subliminal stimuli biased an imagery-content decision task. Participants (n = 17) had to choose one of two different patterns to subsequently imagine. Subliminal primes significantly biased decisions towards imagining the primed option. Then, we trained participants (n = 7) to choose the non-primed option, via post choice feedback. This training was successful despite participants being unaware of the purpose or structure of the reward schedule. This implicit bias training persisted up to one week later. Our proof-of-concept study indicates that decisions might not always have to be biased towards non-conscious information, but instead can diverge from subliminal primes through training.
潜意识信息可以影响我们的意识生活。潜意识刺激可以影响认知任务，而内源性潜意识神经信息可以在意志之前影响决策。决策是否不可避免地偏向潜意识信息？或者通过训练，它们可以从潜意识偏见中偏离？我们报告说，内隐偏见训练可以消除潜意识感觉提示的偏见。我们首先表明，潜意识刺激会使意象内容决策任务产生偏差。参与者（n=17）必须从两个不同的图案中选择一个来想象。潜意识提示明显偏向于想象被提示的选项。然后，我们通过后选择反馈训练参与者（n=7）选择非提示选项。尽管参与者不知道奖励计划的目的或结构，但这种训练是成功的。这种内隐偏见训练在一周后仍然存在。我们的概念验证研究表明，决策不一定必须偏向于无意识信息，而是可以通过训练从潜意识提示中偏离。
