Do our conscious preferences match our actual preferences?

[diozen]

Do our conscious preferences match our actual preferences? I read parts of the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and it mentions that what people say and what people do often does not match and humans have a tendency to just make stuff up just to rationalize things; we think we know what we want but we really don't.

He does have a point. When trying to articulate why I like the color sky blue, I can say it evokes great soothing emotions and it's softness is evokes endless possibilities. But that's just hogwash and doesn't get to the actual essence of why I like the color sky blue. Perhaps I don't even like the color sky blue but just delude myself to. Perhaps it has something to do with my genes? If we can't be conscious of the true essence of what we like and don't like, how can we truly make decisions that cater to our best interests? Perhaps the qualitative nature of preferences lends itself to not being able to be quantitatively known?

[SnerpGoodWord]

This seems a little to general to answer, but in overall I think our unconscious preferences precede our conscious ones. That is, we typically decided whether we like something pretty instantly, and only then analyze the situation. But that analysis can overturn what we preciously decided subconsciously.

Sexual attraction works this way, at least for me - "Oooh, hot girl!" is followed by getting to know her. If it turns out she has a meth habit and is wanted by the cops (or insert your turnoff here), suddenly she's not going to look so good. It's almost a physical transformation.

[sirkinm]

Not only do our subconscious thoughts induce conscious rationalizations, many times we subconsciously want things that we say we don't want. Like the person who is looking for Mr./Ms. Right but feels attraction to Mr./Ms. Wrong.

[Jarrod]

Another aspect is that there can be a lot of conflicts in thinking about what we want (conscious or unconscious). While there may be things we want to do right now (Eat a container of ice cream) we don't want the long-term consequences of them (Fat and unhealthy).

This is one of the reasons I think focusing on who you want to be should be first. Determining your values and what you need to be doing to be happy in the long run gives you a stable base to explore life.

[Mike75]

Not really... Many times our conscious tells us to do something, but for many reasons we do something else. I guess this is what we call the conflict of whether should we following our heart or mind