Escaping the chains: How our unconscious limits and frees us - and how to measure it in market research

This paper explores the role of the unconscious mind in consumer decision making and offers ideas and explanations of how market researchers can access consumer's unconscious processes.

Escaping the chains: How our unconscious limits and frees us - and how to measure it in market research

Leigh Caldwell and Elina HalonenThe Irrational Agency

Introduction: What is the unconscious?

Many psychologists have put forward competing definitions of the unconscious. Some are controversial – such as Freud's theory, which is that unconscious processes are those suppressed because of social unacceptability or trauma, and Jung's, which includes memories which were once conscious but have been forgotten, and collective archetypal experiences. Other thinkers such as Searle dispute the idea of the unconscious as an entity, but accept that...

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