Unconscious Work Doesn’t Work

ABSTRACT

Why do creative ideas and solutions to unresolved problems benefit from taking a break? The idea of unconscious work as an explanation is so appealing that even after reading this paper, which states clearly that unconscious work is a fantasy based on no clear theory and no clear empirical evidence, some readers will claim that we are saying the opposite. Here, we explain why the imaginary meme of unconscious work is so difficult to eradicate from the scientific literature, including the fact that there is no clearly testable theory of unconscious work. Because the lack of a truly testable theory is one of the things that makes this meme so slippery, we propose a testable theory of unconscious work, the Autonomous Unconscious Thought Operations (AUTO) theory, which states that autonomous unconscious operations continuing over time is an essential feature of unconscious work. We describe some requirements of such a theory, and we propose empirical tests of the AUTO theory. We predict that autonomy of unconscious operations will be empirically falsified. The mechanism of unconscious work is not needed to explain so-called “incubation” effects, because there are several testable (and tested) explanations of what happens as a function of breaks from fixated problems, such as multiple bouts of forgotten conscious work, forgetting fixating responses, mind wandering, or set-shifting.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Some types of mind-wandering have been described as occurring without awareness or attention, or as unintentional processes in which activation spreads to new ideas via passive, undirected associations. Baird et al. (2012) suggested that mind-wandering improves creativity via passive spreading activation or loose associations.

2. Not all authors agree with our dismissal of spreading activation as an explanation of incubation effects (see Cai, Mednick, Harrison, Kanady, & Mednick, 2009; Sio & Ormerod, 2009; Sio, Kotovsky, & Cagan, 2017).