13- Unconscious Motives Flashcards
1- Can goals be activated unconsciously?
Auto-motive Model
- Evidence that goals can be pursued automatically by first creating implementation intentions goes against assumption that goal setting
and pursuit are conscious, deliberate, willful, and intentional
Auto-Motive Model
* A strong mental link is developed automatically between situations
and goals that individuals typically pursue in that situation
* These links do not need to be set consciously first
* Implies that goals can be triggered unconsciously
Ex: situation: metro station. goal: travel to mcgill campus action: take orange line to berri-uqam
- Repeatedly pursuing a goal in a particular way (action) in a particular situation will automatically create a mental link between the goal, its action, and the situation
- Because of these mental links, the situation can eventually automatically activate the goal and its associated action outside of
conscious awareness (accidentally taking the orange line even though you’re not going to mcgill today)
Adaptive Automation
* Unconscious goal pursuit is an adaptive process
* Attention is a limited resource so useful to have some decisions be unconscious as this frees up attentional resources
* Keeps a person moving towards desired goal even if conscious mind is focused
elsewhere
2- Can goals be activated unconsciously?
Auto-motive Model
What is the difference between the auto-motive model and implementation intentions? What is evidence for the auto-motive model?
Auto-Motive Model
* Situation-goal-action mental
links created UNCONSCIOUSLY
- Repeated pursuit of that goal in a specific situation
* Long-term and chronic
Implementation Intentions* Situation-goal-action mental
links created CONSCIOUSLY
- Consciously making a specific action plan for a specific situation
* Temporary and strategic
* But can become long-term and chronic
Evidence of Auto-Motive Model?
* Can goals be activated unconsciously and then continue to be pursued outside of conscious awareness?
Interruption Study
* Can goals be activated unconsciously?
* Scrambled sentence task: Prime assertive vs. polite words
* Participants told they must wait for 2nd task because experimenter helping another participant (confederate) with the task
* Results: Participants in rude prime condition (vs. neutral prime condition)
-Time to interrupt: rude 3 mins (!) faster
- Interrupt vs. not: 65% (rude) vs. 15% (polite)
* Participants not aware of prime
- Can goals be primed and pursued unconsciously?
- Method:
- Resource dilemma game
- Before resource dilemma game, completed scrambled sentence task * Construct grammatical sentence from 4 words
- Primed cooperation goal: dependable, helpful, cooperative
- No prime: salad, umbrella, city * No prime + conscious cooperation goal: “cooperate as much as possible”
- How much do participants cooperate (how many fish do they return to the lake)?
Results: participants in primed condition (primed unconscious goal) shared as much as those with conscious goal. - Goals can be pursed unconsciously
- Unconscious goal has the same effect on behaviour as a conscious goal
- Asked participants about their intention to cooperate (“how much
were you trying to cooperate?”) - Conscious cooperation goal condition:
Positive correlation (r = 0.33) between intention to cooperate and cooperative
behaviour - Primed unconscious cooperation condition: No correlation between intention to cooperate and actual cooperative behaviour. Suggests that people are not consciously aware of having a goal, even though they are successfully pursuing this goal
Implications of Auto-Motive Model
* A lot of our behaviour is determined by unconscious forces
* Situational cues will play an important role in determining which
goals we pursue at any given moment
* Marketing and advertising relies on unconscious goal
goal priming
3- How do relationships influence us unconsciously?
Situation with friends, ex: goal to feel understood, action=talk about feelings
Situation with colleagues, goal to be seen as competent, action=meet deadlines and work hard
- Situations can include relationships with specific people
- Does thinking about a specific relationship automatically trigger
interpersonal goals that are then pursued unconsciously? - Hypothesis: Thinking about a particular person activates goals specific to that relationship, which then guide behavior in goal
congruent fashion - Investigated in 3 studies
Study 1:
* What kind of goals do people pursue in different relationships?
* Classmate self-enhancement * But not with friend or romantic partner
* Friend “helping friend” + “enjoy their company/spend time together”
* Mother “wanting to make mom proud” * But not with friend or romantic partner
Study 2:
* Method: * Randomly assigned to 1 of 3 priming conditions: Form a vivid picture in your
mind and write about… * Mother * Best friend * Bedroom (control) * Part 2: Read about “Mark” and form impression
Hypothesis: Mother prime Will see Mark as more motivated to succeed
(vs. friend prime)
Results:
* Thinking about mother increased accessibility of participants’ own goal with
mother (i.e., wanting to succeed) which they then projected onto Mark
* Evidence that relationship-specific goals can be automatically activated by just thinking about that person
Study 3 :
* Does goal strength/ importance moderate this effect?
* Method:
* Pre-study questionnaire about presence of different goals * Goal to make mom proud? * “Yes” Goal group * “No” No goal group
* In the lab, prime:
* Imagine Mom
* Imagine bedroom (Control) * “Verbal test”: Generated as many words as they could from string of letters
* People who had the goal of making their mom proud AND were in the mom-prime condition performed the best
* Evidence that goals need to be activated by situation to influence behaviour (presence of a goal is not enough)
Implications
* Relationship partners can unconsciously activate interpersonal goals
which are then pursued unconsciously
* Relationships have the power to influence our motivations, even
when the relationship partner is not physically present
