The Essence of Conscious Conflict: Subjective Effects of Sustaining Incompatible Intentions

Conflict constitutes one of the fundamental "tuggings and pullings" of the human experience. Yet, the link between the various kinds of conflict in the nervous system and subjective experience remains unexplained. The authors tested a hypothesis that predicts why both the "hot" conflicts involving self-control and motivation and the "cooler" response conflicts of the laboratory lead to changes in subjective experience. From this standpoint, these changes arise automatically from the activation of incompatible skeletomotor intentions, because the primary function of consciousness is to integrate such intentions for adaptive skeletal muscle output. Accordingly, the authors demonstrated for the first time that merely sustaining incompatible intentions (to move right and left) in a motionless state produces stronger subjective effects than sustaining compatible intentions. The results held equally strongly for two different effector systems involving skeletal muscle: arm movements and finger movements. In contrast, no such effects were found with conflict in a smooth muscle effector system. Together, these findings illuminate aspects of the nature of subjective experience and the role of incompatible intentions in affect and failures of self-control.