Resistance to Change: Unconscious Knowledge and the Challenge of Unlearning

Draft of a chapter to appear in a forthcoming book: I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. Abstract The goal of this chapter is to propose that widespread evidence of our failure to achieve individual, organizational and social change may be due, in part, to the impact of automated and unconscious knowledge. After a brief review of the results of personal and collective change programs and the accuracy of self-reported change, the discussion turns to an overview of research on the learning, operation, self-monitoring and unlearning of automated knowledge. Evidence from task analysis is presented to make the case that about 70 percent of adult knowledge is fully automated, unconscious and not inspectable even when it is active because: 1) Adults are largely unaware of many of the goals they are pursuing and the strategies they are using. The consequence of this situation is that we are largely unable to accurately report our attempts to change; 2) When change strategies fail, one of the important but largely unexamined causes is the interference caused by the automated and dysfunctional cognitive behaviors we wish to change, and; 3) We know very little about how to unlearn dysfunctional automated and unconscious knowledge to clear the way for new covert and overt behavior. The chapter ends with a suggestion that if we increase the resources invested in the study of the unlearning of automated knowledge we may increase the success of attempts to achieve and recognize successful personal and social changes.