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Perhaps no postulate is dearer to those embracing the psychoanalytic model of the mind than the dynamic unconscious. Though Freud's complex theory of the unconscious did not lend itself to experimental testing, recent research in the behaviorist tradition has produced results quite compatible with a modern psychoanalytic concept of the dynamic unconscious. In a comprehensive yet pithy review article in Science, Custers and Aarts discuss research challenging the concept that conscious decisions are what determine behavior. The research shows that “goals themselves can arise and operate unconsciously. Social situations and stimuli in the surroundings activate or prime goals in people's minds outside of their awareness, thereby motivating and guiding them. … Thus goals and their pursuit can be influenced by unconscious sources, and these goals do not need to be consciously set and adopted before their influence begins to operate.” In fact, the authors contend that only if we assume that people have unconscious goals does much of human behavior become understandable.
Goals are often pursued without conscious awareness of their presence and therefore are a source of motivated behavior. Even if there is a conscious perception of a goal, the authors contend that “the value or in other words, the reward, that the attainment of a goal carries is a critical factor when the unconscious mind assigns a priority to a goal.” Neuroimaging studies have shown that one of the critical variables that determine the priority of a goal is how reward cues are processed by limbic structures. We can infer that this means that high-priority goals have emotional, not simply executive, importance to the individual. The reward centers respond not only to stimuli linked to hardwired survival functions, but also to learned stimuli that have a positive valence, such as praise.
In summary, the experimental evidence supports the paradigm-shifting argument that goals direct attention and behavior, even