PSC 152 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Automaticity, Intentionality, Controllability
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Automaticity
● Question
○ Do people consciously and actively choose & control (by acts of will) various
experiences & behaviors, or are those experiences and behaviors instead
determined directly by other factors, such as external stimuli or internal,
unconscious forces?
○ Bargh argues that more than 95% of cognition happens unconsciously
● Freudian unconscious
○ Place in our minds for storing unacceptable feelings & desires
■ Freud thought these thoughts were often sexual
○ Things we don’t like about ourselves & don’t want to think about
○ Memories that cause us psychological pain (ex: events from childhood)
○ Freud relied on introspection & case studies
■ So his research was not very scientific (lacks validity)
● Contemporary unconscious
○ Collection of mental processes that are inaccessible to conscious
■ Not seen as a place in the mind stored for unpleasant memories
■ Yet still influence our judgments & behaviors
○ Adaptive in many cases
■ Contemporary view sees unconscious thoughts as adaptive
● Freud saw unconscious thoughts as contribution toward mental
illness
■ Ex: being able to make decisions quickly is a survival advantage
○ Automaticity characterized by several features
■ Freud only had 2 (unconscious & conscious )
● 4 horsemen of automaticity
○ Awareness
○ Intentionality
○ Efficiency
○ Controllability
● Telling more than we can know
○ We have little direct access to own mental processes that cause judgment &
behavior
○ Lack of awareness of
■ Existence of a stimulus that influenced some response (ex: subliminal
priming)
● A stimulus is present for a short amount of time but we do not
notice it in our conscious mind
■ How a stimulus influenced some response (ex: supraliminal priming)
● Stimulus is present for a long enough time that we notice it and
are conscious of it. BUT we do NOT know HOW that stimulus
causes a response
○ When answering “why did you do X?” we give reasons that seem plausible (but
might not be )
■ We can come up with reasons, but they may not be correct
○ Clothing quality
■ Nisbett & Wilson
● Ps viewed 4 (identical) pairs of nylon stockings
● Which do you like best? Why?
● Right- most pair of stockings heavily chosen
○ 4 times more likely than left - most pair
○ Called right-side bias
● “Why did you choose that pair?”
○ I don’t know (followed by some plausible reasons)
■ None mentioned “right side”
■ When experimenter explained results, none
believed it was possible
● Take home points
○ Right side bias influences people’s selections
○ People seem unaware of the right side bias
○ People gave reasons that could NOT be the actual
reasons for why they liked the stocking they did
○ Who’s attractive
■ Johansson et al.
● Ps choose which of 2 faces is more attractive
● On some trials, experimenter secretly gave Ps the non-chosen
photo
● Ps asked to explain their “choice”
● Only about 10% noticed switch
○ Sometimes photos were very dissimilar
● Reasons for preference
○ Always referred to a physical attribute
■ “I like her because she has dark hair” (chose a
woman with blond hair)
● Shows people can come up w/ plausible explanations, but they
are false
● People may have little awareness of the actual reasons behind
their decisions
● Unintentional (spontaneous)
○ Is an act of will necessary to set the process in motion?
○ Ex: Cocktail Party phenomenon
■ Having conversation w/ others in a loud room. When someone calls out
your name, you will unintentionally notice it
● Our name pops out compared to other words
○ Say the color of font
○ Remember the sentence