What was noted by E. J. hanger (1978) remains true today: that much of contemporary psychological research is based on the assumption that people are consciously and systematically processing incoming information in order to construe and interpret their world and to plan and engage in courses of action. As did E. J. hanger, the authors question this assumption. First, they review evidence that the ability to exercise such conscious, intentional control is actually quite limited, so that most of moment-to-moment psychological life must occur through nonconscious means if it is to occur at all. The authors then describe the different possible mechanisms that produce automatic, environmental control over these various phenomena and review evidence establishing both the existence of these mechanisms as well as their consequences for judgments, emotions, and

The authors review evidence that self-control may consume a limited resource. Exerting self-control may consume self-control strength, reducing the amount of strength available for subsequent self-control efforts. Coping with stress, regulating negative affect, and resisting temptations require self-control, and after such self-control efforts, subsequent attempts at self-control are more likely to fail. Continuous self-control efforts, such as vigilance, also degrade over time. These decrements in self-control are probably not due to negative moods or learned helplessness produced by the initial self-control attempt. These decrements appear to be specific to behaviors that involve self-control; behaviors that do not require self-control neither consume nor require self-control strength. It is concluded that the executive component of the self--in particular, inhibition--relies on a limited, consumable resource. To do or not to do: Which requires more effort? In principle, performing almost any behavior should require more exertion than not performing it. Eating a piece of pie, for example, requires various muscular movements of arm, fingers, and jaw. Yet most dieters can attest that refraining from such behaviors can seem more difficult and draining than performing them.

Respondents at an Internet site completed over 600,000 tasks between October 1998 and April 2000 measuring attitudes toward and stereotypes of social groups. Their responses demonstrated, on average, implicit preference for White over Black and young over old and stereotypic associations linking male terms with science and career and female terms with liberal arts and family. The main purpose was to provide a demonstration site at which respondents could experience their implicit attitudes and stereotypes toward social groups. Nevertheless, the data collected are rich in information regarding the operation of attitudes and stereotypes, most notably the strength of implicit attitudes, the association and dissociation between implicit and explicit attitudes, and the effects of group membership on attitudes and stereotypes. Among the most fundamental groups to which humans belong are their gender, race/ ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, religion, nationality, and political and intellectual orientations. Such groups typically contain large numbers of others, often spread across the world, and direct interpersonal contact with only a small subset of these individuals. Yet such membership, the mere act of belonging, can determine psychological, social, and economic fates in significant ways. Whether one is African or European, female or male, rich or

The present research explored the nature of automatic associations formed between short-term motives (temptations) and the overriding goals with which they interfere. Five experimental studies, encompassing several self-regulatory domains, found that temptations tend to activate such higher priority goals, whereas the latter tend to inhibit the temptations. These activation patterns occurred outside of participants’ conscious awareness and did not appear to tax their mental resources. Moreover, they varied as a function of subjective goal importance and were more pronounced for successful versus unsuccessful self-regulators in a given domain. Finally, priming by temptation stimuli was found not only to influence the activation of overriding goals but also to affect goal-congruent behavioral choices. A delicious chocolate cake in the storefront of a bakery may remind individuals of the unfortunate fact that they should go on a diet. A thought of an exotic place, ideal for a relaxing vacation, may conjure up approaching deadlines at work. Momentarily alluring yet morally questionable activities may spontaneously bring to mind the image of a stern parent or a religious leader. On these and similar occasions, elaborating on a seemingly desirable course

Ever since William James, psychologists of emotion have tended to view affective states as intrinsically conscious. We argue that nonconscious affect also exists, and focus specifically on the possibility of unconscious ``liking''. We present evidence that positive and negative affective reactions can be elicited subliminally, while a person is completely unaware of any affective reaction at all �in addition to being unaware of the causal stimulus). Despite the absence of any detectable subjective experience of emotion, subliminally induced unconscious ``liking' ' can influence later consumption behaviour. We suggest that unconscious ``liking' ' is mediated by specific subcortical brain systems, such as the nucleus accumbens and its connections. Ordinarily, conscious liking �feelings of pleasure) results from the interaction of separate brain systems of conscious awareness with those core processes of unconscious affect. But under some conditions, activity in brain systems mediating unconscious core ``liking' ' may become decoupled from conscious awareness. The result is a genuinely unconscious emotion. We begin with apologies to William James for having stolen the title of our paper from his classic article, ``What is an emotion' ' �James, 1884). Worse still, by inserting ``unconscious' ' as a modifier, our title distorts his concept of emotion in a way that renders it almost nonsensical. This is because an unconscious emotion was a contradiction in terms, according to James ' �1884) definition. For James, emotion was a conscious experience or subjective feeling

The authors tested and confirmed the hypothesis that priming a stereotype or trait leads to complex overt behavior in line with this activated stereotype or trait. Specifically, 4 experiments established that priming the stereotype of professors or the trait intelligent enhanced participants ' performance on a scale measuring general knowledge. Also, priming the stereotype of soccer hooligans or the trait stupid reduced participants ' performance on a general knowledge scale. Results of the experiments revealed (a) that prolonged priming leads to more pronounced behavioral effects and (b) that there is no sign of decay of the effects for at least 15 min. The authors explain their results by claiming that perception has a direct and pervasive impact on overt behavior (cf. J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996). Implications for human social behavior are discussed. I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.--Christopher Isherwood Some time ago, a few members of the Department of Social Psychology of the University of Nijmegen visited a soccer match. After they had parked their car, they walked the remaining mile to the stadium. The psychologists, behaving calmly and orderly

What does it mean to be you? How drastically can a person change and still remain, in the eyes of either themselves or their peers, the same person? Until recently, these questions were typically asked in the context of philosophy, psychoanalysis, or science fiction. However, the increasingly common

Abstract – Effective communication between people and interactive robots will benefit if they have a common ground of understanding. I discuss how the common ground principle of least collective effort can be used to predict and design human robot interactions. Social cues lead people to create a mental model of a robot and estimates of its knowledge. People’s mental model and knowledge estimate will, in turn, influence the effort they expend to communicate with the robot. People will explain their message in less detail to a knowledgeable robot with which they have more common ground. This process can be leveraged to design interactions that have an appropriate style of robot direction and that accommodate to differences among people. Index Terms – human-robot interaction, social robots, humanoids, perception, dialogue, common ground, knowledge estimation, speech communication

Previous research has demonstrated that people’s movements can become unintentionally coordinated during interpersonal interaction. The current study sought to uncover the degree to which visual and verbal (conversation) interaction constrains and organizes the rhythmic limb movements of coactors. Two experiments were conducted in which pairs of participants completed an interpersonal puzzle task while swinging handheld pendulums with instructions that minimized intentional coordination but facilitated either visual or verbal interaction. Cross-spectral analysis revealed a higher degree of coordination for conditions in which the pairs were visually coupled. In contrast, verbal interaction alone was not found to provide a sufficient medium for unintentional coordination to occur, nor did it enhance the unintentional coordination that emerged during visual interaction. The results raise questions concerning differences between visual and verbal informational linkages during interaction and how these differences may affect interpersonal movement production and its coordination. Interpersonal interaction often results in the movements of two interactants being coordinated. The dyadically defined goals that intentionally constrain interpersonal interaction are typically responsible for the emergence of this coordination. For instance,

Identity is a central concept in the social sciences. In this study, we present a laboratory experiment that measures the effects of induced group identity on participant social preferences. We find that when participants are matched with an ingroup member (as opposed to an outgroup member) they show a 47 % increase in charity concerns when they have a higher payoff and a 93 % decrease in envy when they have a lower payoff. Likewise, participants are 22 % more likely to reward an ingroup match for good behavior, but 13 % less likely to punish an ingroup match for misbehavior. Furthermore, participants are significantly more likely to choose social-welfare-maximizing actions when matched with an ingroup member. All results are consistent with the hypothesis that participants are more altruistic towards an ingroup match. As a result, ingroup matching generates significantly higher expected earnings than outgroup matching.