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ABSTRACT—Much of social life is experienced through mental processes that are not intended and about which one is fairly oblivious. These processes are automatically triggered by features of the immediate social environment, such as the group memberships of other people, the quali-ties of their behavior, and features of social situations (e.g., norms, one’s relative power). Recent research has shown these nonconscious influences to extend beyond the per-ception and interpretation of the social world to the actual guidance, over extended time periods, of one’s important goal pursuits and social interactions. KEYWORDS—social cognition; automaticity; unconscious Automaticity refers to control of one’s internal psychological processes by external stimuli and events in one’s immediate environment, often without knowledge or awareness of such control; automatic phenomena are usually contrasted with those processes that are consciously or intentionally put into opera-tion. Given the historical focus of social psychology on social problems (e.g., discrimination, aggression), it is important to understand the extent to which such negative outcomes might occur without the person’s awareness or despite his or her good intentions. But just because social psychologists tend to study social problems does not mean that automatic processes produce only negative outcomes. To the contrary, much current automaticity research has focused on how nonconscious processes contribute to successful self-regulation and adaptation. As traditional ap-proaches to self-regulation have emphasized the role of con-scious, controlled, or executive processes in overcoming impulsive reactions or bad habits, the potential role of noncon-scious self-regulatory processes has been somewhat overlooked until recently. But because only conscious, controlled processes can ‘‘time-travel’’—when the person remembers the past or anticipates the future—nonconscious processes become es-sential for keeping the individual grounded adaptively and ef-fectively in the present (Bargh, 1997). In terms of contemporary dual-process approaches to cognition, then, nonconscious processes appear to serve a default, background regulatory function, freeing the conscious mind from the concerns of the immediate environment.

The mere psychological presence of relationship partners was hypothesized to trigger interpersonal goals that are then pursued nonconsciously. Qualitative data suggested that people tend to pursue different interpersonal goals within different types of relationships (e.g., mother, best friend, coworker). In several studies, priming participants ’ relationship representations produced goal-directed behavior (achievement, helping, understanding) in line with the previously assessed goal content of those representations. These findings support the hypothesis that interpersonal goals are component features of relationship representations and that mere activation of those representations, even in the partner’s physical absence, causes the goals to become active and to guide behavior nonconsciously within the current situation. Many of people’s most strongly held goals, fears, and desires spring from their ongoing close relationships. Friends, family members, colleagues, and romantic partners are those whom people try hardest to understand, to whom they wish to grow closer, and from whom they seek to gain approval. Relationship partners are the elicitors of strong and influential motivations—motivations that alter people’s perceptions, change their emotions, and guide

The role of unconscious and conscious thought in decision making was investigated in 5 experiments. Because of the low processing capacity of consciousness, conscious thought was hypothesized to be maladaptive when making complex decisions. Conversely, unconscious thought was expected to be highly effective. In Experiments 1–3, participants were presented with a complex decision problem in which they had to choose between various alternatives, each with multiple attributes. Some participants had to make a decision immediately after being presented with the options. In the conscious thought condition, participants could think about the decision for a few minutes. In the unconscious thought condition, participants were distracted for a few minutes and then indicated their decision. Throughout the experiments, unconscious thinkers made the best decisions. Additional evidence obtained in Experiments 4 and 5 suggests that unconscious thought leads to clearer, more polarized, and more integrated representations in memory. When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters however... the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves.

Six studies examined the goal contagion hypothesis, which claims that individuals may automatically adopt and pursue a goal that is implied by another person’s behavior. Participants were briefly exposed to behavioral information implying a specific goal and were then given the opportunity to act on the goal in a different way and context. Studies 1–3 established the goal contagion phenomenon by showing that the behavioral consequences of goal contagion possess features of goal directedness: (a) They are affected by goal strength, (b) they have the quality of goal appropriateness, and (c) they are characterized by persistence. Studies 4–6 show that people do not automatically adopt goals when the observed goal pursuit is conducted in an unacceptable manner, because the goal will then be perceived as unattractive. The results are discussed in the context of recent research on automatic goal pursuits. The fact that social animals, and especially humans, go beyond the information given to grasp other animals ’ goals fascinates researchers from many different disciplines, perhaps because this ability allows people to flexibly adjust to their social surroundings. Although realizing that someone is trying to be nice to one is informative, understanding the goal behind this behavior is much

Have you ever gotten so angry that you've done something really spiteful? Or felt so much love for your child that you've bored someone to tears by recounting your child's exploits? Or been so sad that life has temporarily lost its meaning? If your answer to any of these ques tions is "yes"-or if anyone you care about would answer "yes"-then this chapter is for you. The focus of this chapter is emotion regula tion, which refers to how we try to influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express these emo tions (Gross, 1998b). Although the topic of emotion regulation is a relatively late addition to the field of emotion, a concern with emotion regulation is anything but new. Emotion regu lation has been a focus in the study of psycho logical defenses (Freud, 192611959), stress and coping (Lazarus, 1966), attachment (Bowlby, 1969), and self-regulation (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). What is new are the theoretical and empiri cal advances that have been made in recent years, thanks to a dramatic increase in atten tion to this topic (Gross, 2007). Until the early 1990s, there were just a few citations a year containing the phrase "emotion regulation." For example, in 1990, PsycINFO listed 4 cita tions containing the phrase "emotion regula tion. " Since this time, there has been an as tonishing increase in citations: In 2005, for instance, the PsycINFO citation count was 671. Although citation counts are an imperfect metric, the lSD-fold-pIus increase in citations over this 15-year period clearly reflects the growing popularity of this topic. Popularity is a wonderful thing, but despite this increased attention, there remains an un fortunate degree of confusion about what emo tion regulation is (and isn't), and what effects (if any) emotion regulation has on important outcomes. My goal in this chapter is to provide a conceptual map and readable introduction useful to anyone who is interested in emotion regulation. In the first section, I provide an ori entation to emotion and emotion regulation, and sketch a process model of emotion regula tion that my colleagues and I have found useful in our work. In the second section, I describe

Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions. Although surprisingly common, anthropomorphism is not invariant. This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants—the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans. These factors help to explain why anthropomorphism is so variable; organize diverse research; and offer testable predictions about dispo-sitional, situational, developmental, and cultural influences on anthropomorphism. Discussion addresses extensions of this theory into the specific psychological processes underlying anthropomorphism, applications of this theory into robotics and human–computer interaction, and the insights offered by this theory into the inverse process of dehumanization.

Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these features should be investigated separately. The authors examine whether features of automaticity can be disentangled on a conceptual level, because only then is the separate investigation of them worth the effort. They conclude that the conceptual analysis of features is to a large extent feasible. Not all researchers agree with this position, however. The authors show that assumptions of overlap among features are determined by the other researchers ’ views of automaticity and by the models they endorse for information processing in general.

Two studies tested whether action control by implementation intentions is sensitive to the activation and strength of participants’ underlying goal intentions. In Study 1, participants formed implementation intentions (or did not) and their goal intentions were measured. Findings revealed a significant interaction between implementation intentions and the strength of respective goal intentions. Implementation intentions benefited the rate of goal attainment when participants had strong goal intentions but not when goal intentions were weak. Study 2 activated either a task-relevant or a neutral goal outside of participants’ conscious awareness and found that implementation intentions affected performance only when the relevant goal had been activated. These findings indicate that the rate of goal attainment engendered by implementation intentions takes account of the state (strength, activation) of people’s superordinate goal intentions.