Conscious thought requires more effort than unconcious thought.  It is theorized that one possible cause of autism is a persons inability to think unconciously.

While most people can behave in an autonomic  way for many routine actions it’s thought those inflicted with autism have to think through eveything in a conscious way.

The danger of Unconcious thought

In theory, being able to rely on predefined soltions to external behavioural clues allows us to focus on the important things directly and conciously.

Those things that require analysis and thought to arrive at informed conclusions, and subsequently, leading to  appropriate behaviour are best handled consciously.

Think about the scenario first thing in the morning.  You begin to encounter other people and mainly great them with a “good morning”.

This is a typical sub conscious behaviour.  Somewhere in your store of unconscious behaviours is a routine grreeting to use in the morning even when it is not reflective of reality.

How often have you muttered good morning to others when in reality for you it was anything but.  People with autism will usually think consciously what their morning  greeting should be and then say it.  Many of us find this disconcerting.

And so that highlights both the benefit and danger of unconscious autonomic behaviours.  They may not really be appropriate because they are based on a pre-defined action and so they could be off putting to some or result in truly inappropriate behaviour.

Of course acting conciously when a routine action is expected could be unnerving as well.  On the whole though acting consciously is more likely to be both supportable (you had a well thought out reason) and the outcomes will often be better.