Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Employers have to teach new employees the risks involved in work just
as we teach our children the dangers of the road.
2.6 CONSCIOUS AND NONCONSCIOUS
So far, we have addressed the five stages of evolution and referred
several times to conscious and nonconscious behavior. Before linking
our history of development to safety management, a short recap of the
place of consciousness might help to clarify the importance of the
nonconscious.
Somewhere during the evolution, mankind developed consciousness
on top of automated behavior. It is not particularly known when this
happened, but we can see that several other species, like chimpanzees
and dolphins, have also developed some form of consciousness. We
enjoy our consciousness, and it makes us very human. We use it for
reflecting, planning, communicating, reading, learning, and responding
to unknown stimuli or carrying out unfamiliar tasks. However, the
majority of our activities is still nonconscious. Behavior stems mostly
from automated systems in our nonconscious domain, especially rou-
tine activities like eating, walking, and common motor tasks.
The nonconscious regulates all automated behavior but can also be
involved in complex mental assignments.
In the example of driving a car, everybody has experienced
moments in which driving is fully nonconscious. We can even drive,
for example, for 15 minutes and suddenly realize that we have traveled
a substantial part of our route already. The more familiar we are with
that route, the easier it becomes to drive fully nonconsciously. During
these 15 minutes, we have avoided many potentially dangerous actions
that could easily have gone wrong, even with fatality as a possible out-
come. However, all went well; our nonconscious system often helps us
safely through a day.
The nonconscious is also involved in complex tasks. Research shows
that we can even finish complicated tasks more successfully on a noncon-
scious level, compared to a conscious level. If we ask two groups to decide
which of eight apartment options is the best to rent, the group that is
