unconscious thought
Mind's background processing
Unconscious thought is mental processing that happens outside awareness.
The term appears in psychology and cognitive science to describe how the mind works on problems, forms impressions, and makes decisions without deliberate attention: I'll sleep on it and let unconscious thought do the work.
Research suggests complex decisions sometimes benefit from unconscious thought—setting a problem aside rather than actively analyzing it.
- intuitionInstinctive immediate understanding
- inner voiceUnspoken mental dialogue
- dreamingMental imagery during slumber
- dream stateConsciousness during sleep
- repressedHeld back from expression
Freud · hidden · automatic · subliminal · instinct · gut feeling · gut reaction · sleep · primal · latent · blind spot · shadow · buried · deep down · reflex · knee jerk · split second · implicit
- implicit cognitionimplicit bias, priming, procedural memory, subliminal perception
- instinctsinstinct, survival instinct, survival instincts, maternal instinct, gut instinct
unconscious, unconsciously, unconsciousness, conscious, consciously, consciousness, subconscious, conscience, thought