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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. To what are innumerable facets of ourselves linked?

2. What does Eagleman say has happened to complicated processes in his analogy of consciousness?

3. How much of the activity of our brain does the conscious mind represent?

4. What does Eagleman say about implicit egotism?

5. What does Eagleman claim most people possess?

Short Essay Questions

1. What ways can our vision be fooled?

2. Why is it an advantage to be able to do things without the use of the conscious mind?

3. How does Eagleman offer an analogy of one's awareness to a newspaper headline?

4. What has given greater insight into the workings of the mind since Freud's time?

5. What does Eagleman say scientists continually study, and what is the result?

6. What is the simple experiment Eagleman asks the reader to perform?

7. What is the point of the experiment that Eagleman suggests the reader try?

8. Explain the example of the chicken sexers that Eagleman discusses.

9. How can the brain see without eyes and what is one way this is possible?

10. What does Eagleman describe in the opening chapter?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Eagleman gives the reader an overview of his ideas about success in Incognito. Discuss one of the following:

1. Discuss Eagleman's opinions of three topics he discussed in relation to the brain. Do you agree or disagree with him? Why? Use examples from Incognito to support your answer.

2. Compare and contrast Eagleman's opinions from Incognito with what you might imagine Eagleman's opinion might be had he lived 100 years ago. How do you think his opinions would change? Would they remain the same? Explain fully. Use examples from Incognito to support your answer.

3. Discuss how you think Eagleman's view on several topics from this essay informs his life as a researcher. Use examples from Incognito to support your answer.

Essay Topic 2

Eagleman presents the example of an experiment where men were shown photographs of the faces of several women and asked to rate their attractiveness. Photographs where the women's eyes had been dilated were consistently ranked as more attractive. When asked why they had chosen some women as more attractive than others, the subjects did not mention the dilated eyes as a factor, yet they clearly were. Eagleman adds that dilated pupils in a woman indicate a state of sexual arousal, suggesting that the subjects who found these photos more attractive were acting on a natural impulse of their unconscious minds.

1. Do you think attraction is a conscious choice or and unconscious one? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

2. Discuss one situation in which you were attracted to something, e.g. a person, a food dish, a car, etc. but were not sure why you felt the way you did and relate it to Eagleman's idea of unconscious attraction. Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

3. If Eagleman is correct about why men might be attracted to a woman, what do you think that might mean about most marriages? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

Essay Topic 3

There are ways to measure how our unconscious minds affect our conscious thinking even without our knowing it, Eagleman explains. For example, a person may consciously profess to have no prejudicial feelings about people of a certain race, but experiments that ask them to associate certain words such as "like" or "dislike" with photographs or words describing different races or creeds can reveal that they may move slightly toward the "dislike" option before choosing "like". This reveals a conflict between the unconscious and unconscious minds, Eagleman claims.

1. Do you think you could have unconscious feelings, such as prejudice, of which you are unaware? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

2. Discuss what conflicts might rise between the unconscious and conscious mind when you decide not to study for a test. Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

3. Do you think the unconscious mind always makes the best decisions over the conscious mind? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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