although the two systems work together much of the time, there are times when the C-system appears to react to, suppress, and/or overrule the X-system. For instance, a habit that is sustained by the X-system—such as swearing profusely at every red light while driving—may need to be occasionally suppressed—such as when your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s parents are in the car.
The conceptual distinction between automatic and controlled processes is a useful one that nicely maps onto our social experiences. However, the difference is really more of matter of gray than of black and white. It is more accurate to ask how much of a given behavior is automatic versus controlled rather than whether it is one or the other. There are actually four components of automaticity, and a given event will be considered more automatic to the extent that it is (1) unintentional, (2) occurs without conscious awareness, (3) is accomplished efficiently, and (4), once begun, cannot be controlled (Andersen et al., 2007; Bargh, 1994; Fiedler & Hütter, 2014; Spunt & Lieberman, 2013). Take for example the experience of a song that keeps “playing” in your mind after you hear it blasting down the hallway in your residence. As you walk away and are no longer within earshot of the music, you find that the tune continues to cycle in your mind. This experience meets three of the four criteria for automaticity. First, note that this happens without intention: You did not consciously begin to mentally replay the song. Second, the song streams effortlessly and generally does not detract you from performing other tasks and is therefore efficient. Often, the song plays over and over with no conscious control required.
Third, to the extent that you cannot stop “playing” this song, the more automatic it is. However, because you are clearly conscious of the song, it is not an example of pure automaticity. In contrast, take the example of the Bargh scrambled sentence study described in Chapter 1 where participants walked more slowly after being exposed to elderly related words. This behavior is purely automatic, because it occurred without conscious intent and outside of awareness (participants did not know how the words changed their behavior), was efficiently performed (little effort was required), and could not be controlled (because the participants were not aware of it).
There are several types of automatic processes. The first consists of processes that were initially explicitly learned and later became automatic (Dijksterhuis, 2010). Take for instance learning to tie our shoes, which requires that we initially slow our thinking and movements down and watch our fingers make the proper motions. Once we have mastered the skill, we perform it without thinking. A second type of automatic process occurs when concepts that have been learned implicitly affect subsequent behavior (Andersen et al., 2007; Dijksterhuis, 2010). For instance, we can develop certain attitudes, called implicit attitudes, without conscious intent, and these attitudes may alter how we evaluate and interact with people (Dovidio, Pagotto, & Hebl, 2011; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Many Americans harbor implicit negative prejudices toward the elderly that they probably “picked up” without conscious thought (Nelson, 2009). The third category of automatic processes is priming, which was demonstrated in the scrambled sentence study mentioned in Chapter 1; here, an environmental stimulus temporarily and nonconsciously guided behavior.
Priming: Thinking and Doing Without Knowing
One of the ways in which social behavior can be affected outside of conscious awareness is through a process called priming. Priming occurs when a concept or other knowledge structure is automatically triggered or activated by an environmental stimulus, thereby becoming more likely to affect subsequent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Förster & Liberman, 2007; Higgins, 1989; Welsh & Ordóñez, 2014). When you read the word gun, what other concepts or words come to mind? Perhaps bullet, violence, and soldier (see Figure 3.2 on page 90)? The activation of fire engine led to the activation of other concepts that are closely associated with it in your memory, a process called spreading activation (Collins & Loftus, 1975; Newell & Shanks, 2014; Sansom-Daly & Forgas, 2010). In Bargh’s scrambled sentence task described earlier, words related to elderly were consciously processed and activated, and this in turn triggered the nonconscious activation of the actual concept, elderly (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). Bargh et al. (1996) similarly nonconsciously primed participants with neutral, rude, or polite words, and they subsequently acted consistently with that prime (see Figure 3.3 on page 90). In addition to concepts, other knowledge structures that can be automatically activated by stimuli in the environment include goals, motivations, and evaluations (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Tröschel, 2001; Hassin, Bargh, & Zimerman, 2009; Sansom-Daly & Forgas, 2010). For instance, nonconsciously activating the goal of impression formation can lead people to form more coherent impressions of a target person (Chartrand & Bargh, 1996) than control individuals do.
Recently, research on priming has come under intensive scrutiny after a number of failures to replicate what had been considered to be solid, reliable findings (Molden, 2014; Pashler, Coburn, & Harris, 2012; Pashler, Rohrer, & Harris, 2013). Concerns about the replicability of priming effects has led to a wider debate about what constitutes a true replication and to what extent we can expect highly context-sensitive effects to replicate across settings (Cesario, 2014). Currently the debate rages on, and it will be fascinating to watch in the coming years as researchers closely examine when and why nonconscious activation of concepts, feelings, and goals may occur.
X-system: Primarily reflexive, nonconscious, or automatic parallel processing system
C-system: Largely reflective, sequential, conscious, or deliberative mental processing system
Automaticity: Extent to which a given event is unintentional, occurs without conscious awareness, is accomplished efficiently, and once begun, cannot be controlled
Self-Reflection 3.1
How Do You Feel About Robots? (Part 1)
The 2014 Hollywood movie The Imitation Game relays the story of Alan Turing, a British computer scientist who was instrumental in decoding secret German military communications and, consequently, helping to defeat the Nazis in World War II. Turing worked in the area of artificial intelligence and was fascinated with whether or not a computer would ever be able to think as well as a human. Indeed, one of his lasting legacies is what is called the Turing Test: A computer could be said to think like a human if, when verbally interacting with a human, the human could not distinguish it from an actual human conversation partner. The fact that artificially intelligent machines are already assuming many complex tasks that previously only humans could accomplish is scary for many people. What are your attitudes toward intelligent robots? Take a minute and answer the following questions and then turn the page to see what others think.
Table 3.2Feel
Source: Tsui, K. M., Desai, M., Yanco, H. A., Cramer, H., & Kemper, N. (2010). Measuring attitudes toward telepresence robots. International Journal of Intelligent Control and Systems, 1–11.
Self-Reflection 3.2
How Do You Feel About Robots? (Part 2)
These questions are drawn from an online study of Americans and Asian Indians conducted by Tsui, Desai, Yanco, Cramer, and Kemper (2010) into people’s attitudes toward telepresence robots. Robots are telepresence when they cannot be moved around without direct human control. To obtain your results, first reverse the scoring for the final three items (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1) and then total Items 1 through 6, 7 through 11, and 12 through 14 to get three
