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Presenting subjects with four groups of words delivered for one millisecond through a tachistoscope, below the objective threshold for conscious perception (i.e., operationally unconscious), the experimenters found that although the grand aver- age of forced guesses yielded no better than chance identification, certain features of the words, different motivational states and preferences among the subjects, and the nature of the testing task could improve the accuracy of identification. Regarding the words, although word structure (length) had no effect, pleasant words were identified better than unpleasant ones if the subjects felt that they were motivated to perform the identification task, and if the “pop” rather than the “look” condition were both called for and preferred by the subject. The “look” condition required a concerted effort to try to discern the word, whereas “popping” resembled free association—allowing whatever word comes to mind. The findings were repeated in two experiments; a pseudo-experiment using blank cards but identical conditions served as a control.
Clearly, along with some convergent evidence for nontrivial, unconscious mentation, these experiments also give some hint of unconscious defensive operation and of the efficacy of free association as a means for making available what was previously unavailable to consciousness.