Quiz 3 Flashcards
Where do gut feelings come from?
1) fundamental, evolved motives (natural selection)
2) personal past (early experience)
3) recent past (carryover effect)
4) the present (contagion and context)
5) the future (active goals)
Jeff Simpson et al: attachment at age 1
Attachment at age 1 predicts:
Social ability in grade school
Number of friends in high school
How long their relationships last in their 20s
How the past affects our perception of in/out groups
Soak up the cultural values of people in our group and reject the values of those in an an out group
Ambady, Shih, et al: priming cultural identity
Priming Asian identity in Asian-American 5 year old girls increased their math performance on an age appropriate math test and priming female identity decreased their math performance
Weisbuch et al: steryotipic/racist non-verbal behaviour on TV
Found that on TV white actors viewed African American characters with equal roles as more negative based on non-verbal cues than they did their white counterparts with equal roles to the black characters
Correll et al: the police officers dilemma
Cultural biases became evident under time pressure. White participants shot black people more often when they were unarmed. Did not shoot armed white participants when they had a gun at a much higher rate
Gut feeling (definition):
Clear positive or negative feelings of which you do not know the source or reason
(Implicit learning based on last experience)
Kahneman & Klein: when should you trust your gut?
Experts intuition can be trusted when there is immediate feedback such as a fire fighter.
Stockbrokers or advertisers may be successful on a gut feeling but only when those ideas just happen to work out, it’s pure luck.
Zajonc: Mere exposure
Participants had a greater liking for old rather than new objects in the absence of the ability to discriminate from new at better than chance. Meaning that just having exposure to something leads us to have a positive association to it that implicitly influences our choices.
Implicit memory effect (definition):
Greater liking for previously presented stimuli, in the absence of conscious recognition
How does the mere exposure effect happen?
The more a stimuli is presented, the more easily it is processed the next time. Which builds up and sharpens your internal perceptual representation and leads to perceptual fluency.
Perceptual fluency (definition)
Easily recall information given a stimulus. It is an important meta-cognitive signal, that we use to ‘trust’ our perceptual experiences. Perceptual fluency increases with exposure.
Schwarz & Newman: Truthiness
Fluency can cause stereotypes to mislead us by automatically (fluently, effortlessly) providing information about an individual. It feels like it’s coming from ‘out there’ but it is actually a product of our minds
Even the font of the exact same directions influences our perception of the quality/truthiness of the directions
Fluency (definition)
How easily we can recognize stimuli. Evolved adaptive cue that can be fooled by modern developments such as fonts
Ex: advertisers use mere exposure effect of familiarity with the brand or product
Morewedge intuition studies
People trust their intuitions as if it were a supernatural message (voice of god). We also take our dreams as premonitions and thought content that comes unbidden and not from intentional thought is seen as God talking to you.
Geiselin: the creative process
Answers often come to famous artists and scientists during a dream or while shaving or something while they are not consciously thinking about the problem. This only occurs after a lot of conscious thought has been given to the problem in the first place.
Descartes: dualism
Conscious thought is distinguished from mechanical, physical, bodily reactions. Conscious thought is considered god-like and unconscious thought is your animal nature.
Morewedge intuition study on Descartes and Searle
Conscious thought is original, as in I am the source whereas unconscious though comes from somewhere else that isn’t me.
What are some other things that can fool our modern mind
Photographs or thin slices can trick us because they activate stereotypes because of the fluency with which those stereotypes are activated. Ex: grumpy old man turns out to be nice
Olivola & Todorov: are faces diagnostic?
Faces are not diagnostic of the traits we immediately perceive in a person
Ambady & Rosenthal: Thin slices
People can predict with good accuracy many social and clinical outcomes just from a brief 30 second exposure to expressive behaviours. Having more time didn’t change the accuracy
Ex: teacher effectiveness, therapist effectiveness, depression in patients
Susan Andersen: transference
Morphed photo of a random person with a loved one led to an increased liking of the new person because the recognizable features of the loved one in the novel person contributed to our perception of them.
How can we improve our judgements based on intuition
Check if the context matches the evolutionary conditions
Take our intuitions seriously but not as the only basis for a decision
Remove carryover effects by sleeping on it
Think about who the decision will affect
The beauty premium: real life consequences of attractiveness
More women and men were called back for an interview if they were perceived as more attractive given the same resume than people that were perceived as unattractive. You were better off not sending a photo at all than being unattractive.
Shane Fredrick: The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)
Measures the tendency for someone to override a gut feeling
Kahneman- system 1 and system 2
System 1 makes the errors and system 2 corrects them
Gerd Gigerenzer - fast and frugal judgments
If system 1 is error prone why did it evolve in the first place?
When can you trust your intuitions?
In domains of expertise and considerable past experience with feedback regarding being right or wrong. Always check intuitions for potential biases
George Miller: mental life
Mental life is about what you do. It’s about your active goals
What are our active goals?
Active goals are the present states we are trying to maintain and the future states we are trying to attain
Freud: unconscious motivation
There is A separate, pre-conscious unconscious, full of destructive motive and drives
Karen Horney: alignment of explicit and implicit motives
True self and the social self can be misaligned which can result in anxiety from having to be publicly a different person than you are in private.
Weinberger & McClelland: implicit motivation
Peoples implicit motivations can be influenced thus there is a distrust of self reported measures of motivations and goals. They looked at ways people implicitly express those motivations
McClelland: implicit measures of needs
Need for achievement (John Atkinson)
Need for power (David winters)
Need for affiliation
Beaumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice: The agentic self
Many crucial functions of the self involve volition: making choices and decisions, taking responsibility, initiating and inhibiting behaviour , and making plans of action and carrying out those plans. The self exerts control over itself and the external world.
Bandura: conscious choice is involved in all behaviour and judgments
All self regulation is conscious and intentional
Fiske: category based effect
There is an immediate affect on cognition with mere exposure of something if it has been categorized
See a carrot, think carrot, associate carrot with good. The more exposure to that the more automatic it becomes.
Bargh: motivation without cognition
Goals become tied to their usual situations such as location. See the office, think office, associate with goal of making money. Context matters for the goal (present)
Cohn Fehr & Marechal: situated identities
Priming investment banker identity lead to increased instances of cheating in the coin toss game. If their banker identity was not primed then they did not cheat. Didn’t need to be in the office to cheat, simply asking them what they did for work primed the identity.
Aarts & Dijksterhuis: the silence of the library
Student taking a note to the library or the cafeteria has different behaviour depending on the location of where they were going. They were quieter in the hallway when going to the library because their library identity was primed.
Neisser model for goals
Preconscious analysis of environment triggers higher mental processes and these executive processes develop the goal.
Auto-motive model
The environment influences the goal because the goal is triggered pre-consciously and that goal affects the executive process
Bargh et al: unconscious goal pursuit
Goals can be triggered by external stimuli in the absence of conscious intentions and will produce the same effects as when they are consciously chosen
The dachenhaus experiments
Found that goals were influenced by external stimuli. Achievement goal priming resulted in better performance on the word search test and priming cooperation lead to more cooperation in the resource management experiment. Both unconsciously.
Over & Carpenter: unconscious goal pursuit in infants
18 month olds helped more after priming subtle signs of interpersonal bonds
Classic qualities of conscious goal pursuit
1) persistence
2) resumption
3) consequences for mood & motivational strength
Kurt Lewin: signature qualities of motivational states
Priming Goal pursuit will result in overcoming obstacles (perseverance) and resuming interrupted tasks
What are the stages of goal pursuit?
Goal selection —> goal pursuit —> completion of attempt —> self evaluation —> repeat
Chatrand: qualities of unconscious motivational states: changes in mood
Post performance mood was more dramatically affected when the achievement goal is operating even unconsciously. Those that had achievement primed also viewed the task as easier or harder when the achievement goal was activated.
What are the similarities between unconscious and conscious goal pursuit
Goal activation and operation can be both conscious and unconscious
Goal operation extends over time
Unconsciously pursued goals produce the same outcome as conscious pursuit of the same goal and have the same motivational qualities of persistence, resumption, and self-evaluation apply.
Vroom: goal selection
Goal selection depends on the reward value. The reward value is dependant on the probability that the goal will be achieved times the value of the reward. Thus a person will not try hard for a very low expectancy of attaining the goal. They will also not try for a goal with little value
Custer & Aarts: goal motivation affected by incentives
Participants given an activity and some sort of either positive or negative stimulus (incentive). Participants later preferred to engage in the activity associated with positive stimuli
Lantham et al: Field studies of high performance goal priming
Combining role of achievement and motivation demonstrated real results for performance like raising more money after being primed with a picture of someone winning a marathon.
Lantham et al: Organizational psychology
Better customer service and problem solving skills after CEO weekly email contained achievement and high performance primes or desktop graphics primed friendly customer service agent.
Papies et al: obesity and snack primes
Recipe fliers with healthy/diet primes reduce grocery store snack purchases for obese individuals and only obese individuals if they had the goal of losing weight.
Autonomous goal operation
1) goals become active independently of the ‘agentic self’
2) goals can operate outside of conscious awareness & control, even increasing and decreasing in strength according to environmental feedback
3) unconscious goals produce the same outcomes in the same manner of consciously pursued goals
Huang & Bargh: the selfish goal
Autonomy is a feature of all goal pursuits whether they are conscious or not. The active goal pursues its ends, guiding selective attention, evaluating events and objects in terms of how good they are for the goal, not necessarily for the individual and stay active until completed and turning off when completed all on their own.
What connects genetic influence and adaptive behaviour?
Motivations and goal programs are the crucial link between genetic influences from the deep past and adaptive behaviour in the present-day environment
Bargh & Gollwitzer et al: original goal priming studies (dachenhaus experiments)
1) achievement priming increased task performance
2) cooperation priming increased cooperation
3) primed goals produced the same outcomes as the same conscious goal
4) participants showed no sign of being aware of the unconscious goal even right after pursuing it
Bandura: consequences of goal pursuits
Individuals mood and goal strength is highly dependant on success or failure of the goal attempt
Spelke et al: skills of divided attention
Ability to do multiple complex information processing tasks at the same time like driving a car with no memory of the last 20 kilometres. Fluency and unconscious thought theory
Warrington & Weiskrantz: blindsighted
Cues to the blind eye help responses
Dijksterhuis & Aarts: attention without awareness
Focus of conscious attention determines whether it is conscious or unconscious thought. Thinking about the car while focus is on the car is conscious thought. Thinking about the car while focus is directed elsewhere is unconscious thought
Dijksterhuis, Maarten, Nordgren, Van Baaren: unconscious thought theory
Given a difficult choice with a correct answer like picking a car or an apartment those that were given a distractor task, thus they were thinking about the decision unconsciously had more correct answers than those who consciously thought about the decision the whole time.
Marien et al: does unconscious goal operation use the same working memory?
6 experiments showing that unconscious achievement and other motives operate using the same working memory structures and executive processes as in conscious goal pursuit.
Pessiglione & Frith: value and effort: subliminal reward cues
Same region of the brain lights up when given subliminal reward cues or clear reward cues
Goal autonomy means independence from intentions and wishes
1) goals turn off even if you want them to stay on
2) goals stay on when you do want them on
3) goals also stay on when you do not want them on
Atkinson & Birch: goal turn-off effects
Goals cooperate with each other by taking turns
When one goal is attained the goal turns off in order to allow another goal a chance at pursuit
From a period after completion, then, even goals that are desirable all the to become inactive and inhibited.
Made public statement against sexism then given task of hiring in a male dominated industry, those that made the public statement hired men disproportionately more. Which went against their initial statement
Mornin and Miller: moral licensing and moral bank accounts
Participants were given the opportunity to disagree with bluntly sexist comments. This fulfilled their goal to be egalitarian and non-sexist. They were then more willing than a control group to recommend a man rather than a woman for a stereotypical male job.
Bargh, Green, Fitzsimmons: unintended helping, unintended failure to help
Participants actively engaged in helping specific person with a picture identification task were more willing to give money to a charitable cause than did control participants. But, those no longer engaged with helping the participant were now less likely to donate to charity or help the honours student compared to the control condition.
Cofer & Apley: incubation effects (the unconscious never sleeps)
When trying to remember something that you know you know, the answer often pops into your head later on while doing something else entirely, sometimes you’ve forgotten you ever wanted to remember it.
Fichten et al: the troubling thoughts of the night
The main predictor of not getting back to sleep at night were negative, anxiety provoking thoughts about the near future. Namely Incomplete or unfulfilled important goals
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema: ruminitions
Can’t stop thinking about something even if you really want to stop thinking about it. (Think the family guy with the tiny bones in the maracas thing)
Daniel Wegner: ironic processes
Trying not to do something requires keeping in mind what you do not want to do, this keeps it accessible in your mind. Then when distracted or under attentional load, it is more likely than usual to be thought, said, done etc.
Bargh, Green, Fitzsimmons: waiter report study
Job interview for a waiter or crime reporter. Told to evaluate the candidate for the job when there was many interruptions for the interviewer and the interrupter was either polite or very rude. After watching the tape, they were asked to share their opinion of the interrupter, if they were interviewing for crime reporter, they liked rude mike more, if they were interviewing for waiter they liked polite mike more. Kind of like situated identities
The downside of the selfish goal and goal autonomy
What is good for the goal may not be good for the individual in the long term, or reflect their long term values
Unconscious goal pursuit in everyday life
1) once triggered, operates in service of that goal
2) effects on attention, evaluation, choices, behaviour
3) continue to operate until completed
4) turn off when completed
What are real life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit
Perceived goals of others
Common, naturally occurring contexts
Situational power
External reminders about one’s own goals
Mere thought about significant others
Threats and need states (homeostasis)
Emotions
Goal contagion
We get our goals from other people, from merely perceiving their goal directed behaviour. Or mearly thinking about important people in our lives (psychological presence) which activates the goals we usually pursue with them.
Aarts Gollwitzer & Hassan: goal contagion
Participants either read about someone that needed money or not then were given a chance to earn money if they had enough time at the end of the experiment. Those primed with earning money were more likely to choose to do the final money earning task. Their goal strength was measured on how quick they clicked to get to the money making task. Money goal activated participants own need for money.
Hamlin, Hallinan, & Woodward: goal contagion with infants
7 month olds saw experimenter preform a goal-directed (grabbed or reached for) or non-goal-directed (pointed at) action towards the toy. Infants preferred to play with the reached-for object than the pointed to object
Ackerman et al: you wear me out/ ego depletion
Watching or reading about another person who engages in difficult self-regulation for extended periods of time reduces the observers own ability to self regulate afterwords. As if the other persons willpower causes you to simulate your own use of willpower which taps into the same limited willpower resource. Only get ego depletion when putting yourself in others shoes.
Kay, Wheeler, Bargh & Ross: priming and the prisoners dilemma game
Backpack primes cooperative behaviour in the prisoners dilemma whereas a briefcase primes competitive behaviour
Holland, Hendricks, and Aarts: olfactory goal priming
The mere perception of an odour directly guide actions. Participants subliminal exposed to the scent of all purpose cleaner and were given a crumbly biscuit to eat and were asked the 5 things they were gonna do for the rest of the day and the measured how many times the cleaned the crumbs up. Those that were primed with the cleaning scent said they would clean more that day and cleaned up the biscuit more.
Rodger Barker: Midwest city
The setting of a persons behaviour is by far the best predictor of what they will do there
Situational cues to behaviour
Features of commonly experienced situations can also activate behavioural tendencies, and promote conformity to social norms
Berger et al: location influences behaviour of voters
Priming influences voting behaviour based on the location. If voting in a church, you are more likely to vote in line with religious/church positions. If voting at a school, you’re more likely to vote for more educational support.
How does power exert its influence over us?
Power is the ability to get your important goals, thus, power will tend to become associated with a persons most important goals. Overtime those goals may become automatic
Kipnis: does power corrupt everyone
Their answer is yes. Giving people power makes them more self-centred and less concerned about others. They devalue those less powerful in terms of their ability and worth.
Sexual assault and harassment and power
Power situations activates sex goals in sexual harassers and aggressors. Thus the power activates the goals the goals aren’t a result of the power. They already existed
Bargh et al: the influence of power on attraction
Participants with high ASA scores rated the female as more attractive when primed with power. They needed the power to trigger their sex goal.
Chen Lee-Chai & Bargh: power doesn’t corrupt everyone
It depends on what your important interpersonal goals are. If the person is exchange oriented, they will use the power for selfish goals. If the person is communal oriented they will use the power for other oriented goals.
Had people sit in a professor chair and have the other person show up late so person in the professor chair could choose who gets assigned what task. Also did a social responsibility quiz as well. Exchangers were more selfish than communal people.
We own our unconscious goals (power and corruption)
Situational power reveals the persons most important goals
Mazur, Ariely et al: Ten Commandments study
Merely trying to recall all of the 10 commandments caused participants to be more honest and more al afterwards, when given the opportunity to cheat
Fitzsimons & Bargh. Priming significant others/priming mom
Our mental representations of close relationship partners (significant others) include the important goals we pursue when with them. Even thinking about that person activates the goals we have with them.
Homeostasis and equilibrium: goal is triggered by situational cues
We are motivated to maintain normalcy and equilibrium.
Ex: hunger makes you seek food, thirst make you seek water, cold makes you seek warmth
Restore equilibrium in emotions and social relations
When one has a negative emotion or social experience, one is motivated to improve mood and social relations
K. Williams, N. Eisenberger; Park & Maner: cyberball study
Social exclusion vs inclusion in the cyberball ball game, triggers the need for affiliation
Ijzerman & Semin: room temperature after rejection
Participants estimated the room temperature to be colder after a rejection experience and warmer after an inclusion experience
Zhong & Leonardelli: food after rejection
Greater preference for warm foods for lunch after a rejection compared to cold foods
Gilbert: hunger study
You buy more at the supermarket when you’re hungry
Xu, Schwarz & Wyer: hunger study
You buy more over everything at Walmart and target when you are hungry. you also take more free stuff compared to non hungry people. Unless you eat a muffin or write out a list
Loewenstein: need states guide behaviour for addicts
When need states are inactive, the person does not feel the need very strong and anticipates no problem controlling it later. But when active the need overrides then plans to not use and intentions made when the need was inactive.
Active goal is in charge, not self
The active goal changes evaluations of people, objects, behaviours, and events, in terms of whether they facilitate or interfere with the goal.
Loewenstein: visceral influences on behaviour
Visceral influences such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, physical pain etc produce a strong, usually negative subjective experience. They create a strong focus on the present and narrow concerns to the self only.
Visceral factors often change the relative desirability of goods and actions, against one’s self interest
Haidt: emotional dog and it’s rational tail
Instead of moral reasoning producing the emotion, the emotion is experienced immediately and intuitively, and causes the reasoning
Haidts moral intuition it’s model
Fear = withdraw, seek safety
Anger = attack, change situation
Disgust = reject, repulse, avoid
Lerner, small, & Loewenstein: carry-over effects of recent emotional experience
Compared two negative emotions: disgust and sadness.
Disgust = behavioural tendency to expel current objects and resist taking in anything new (Rozin)
Sadness = implicit goal to change one’s circumstances
Disgust = accept less and offer less
Sad = accept less and offer more (compulsive shopping)
Lerner et al: emotional influences on consumption behaviour
Disgust = offered less and asked for less for a given item
Sadness = offered more and accepted less
Unconscious motivations and social life
1) get our goals from others
2) project our own goals onto others
3) power activates own personal important goals
4) pursuer social goals like the need to belong unconsciously
5) often blind to our motivations
What are the 5 basic evolved motives
Belonging
Control
Safety
Warmth
Cooperation
Baumeister & Leary: need to belong
There are actual physical health consequences of not belonging such as stress, illness, and shorter life span
John bowlby: trust and attachment
Physical warmth is conflated with social warmth where social warmth is having the other persons best interests at heart
Harry Harlow: wire vs cloth mothers
Warm cloth mother enabled a successful transition to adulthood for the primates whereas the wire mother did not
Shira Gabriel et al: situational relationships and leisure time
Most of our leisure time is spent meeting our deeper social needs to belong but we often do them alone like watching tv or reading a book. This means that we can fill our social needs without having to actually be around people by using tv, books, social media etc
Boothby: shared experiences
Sharing an experience with someone we know makes the experience more intense and memorable.
Boothby, Clark, & Bargh - sweet vs unsweetened chocolate
Liked the chocolate more when you tried it with someone than when you tried it alone. Liked the bakers chocolate less. Experiences more intense when done in the presence of someone else, not just someone you know.
Rubin: strangers on the train
Feel compelled to over share personal stuff with a stranger because you’re never gonna see them again
Swan: self-verification theory
People want others to see them as they see themselves and will take steps to ensure that others perceive them in ways that conform to stable self-views
Wicklund & Gollwitzer: symbolic self completion theory
People have a need to make internal changes of self-conception a social reality by sharing them with others
McKenna & Bargh: symbolic self-completion of stigmatized identities
Infiltrated chat rooms of unsavoury people and convinced them to share their values that they had kept hidden from others with important people by gaining their trust. Chat rooms gave people with stigmatized values a space to actively participate in self-completion with people of like values. Sharing with others that weren’t in the chat room had bad consequences
Basic logic behind projective tests
Our own underlying motives are more accessible than other ones we don’t have, so then they are more likely to be perceived in others.
See reflection of our own goals in social situations. The study with the pictures of social situations
Kawanda et al: projection of one’s own motives onto others
Participants are primed to either be helpful or nosy, after that they perceive the other person as wither helpful or nosy.
Works both ways: mental representations of certain behaviour becomes more accessible whether perceiving it in others or engaging in the behaviour yourself.
Tetlock: evolved motivations for social life
Different mentalities of “intuitive” politicians, persecutors, theologians, and scientists are triggered by different situations. This alters goals, values, behaviour and ways of handling evidence which leads to inconsistencies in court.
Emily Pronin: the bias blind spot (consequences of unconscious motivations)
We are not away of our own motivations to evaluate evidence and reach certain desired conclusions and so we believe we are being objective: this means those who disagree with us are not being objective, and so must be motivated to hold their opinions.
How bias blind spots exacerbate group conflict
We believe that we are being objective during a disagreement with others because we are not conscious of our own motivations operating thus if we think we’re objective and someone is disagreeing with us, they must be biased but we’re also actually biased.
Fitzgerald: Supreme Court sexual harassment cases
75% of perpetrators genuinely did not realize that they were doing something wrong. They were not aware of their unconscious motivations and how it affected their behaviour
Eibach, Libby, & Gilovich: how having a baby changes your perception
Having a baby makes you believe that the world itself has gotten more dangerous because you are responsible for the baby and more alert of potential dangers. You’re more likely to rate neighbourhood crime as increasing during child raising years when they have actually decreased over time.
Boothby, Clark & Bargh: the invisibility cloak illusion
We check out other people all the time but don’t think that anyone is looking at us.
The mind gap: We believe that we think about others more than they think about us
The liking gap: we believe that we like new acquaintances more than they like us
Sherman, Chassin et al implicit and explicit attitudes towards smoking
Attitude toward smoking for smokers was dependant on if they were in a nicotine need state or not. If they were in a need state, smoking was viewed positively, if they weren’t, smoking was viewed negatively. Thus, changing the motivational state changes the implicit attitude towards smoking
Give an example of how the selfish goal overrides rationality
In app purchases for candy crush result in spending hundreds on a stupid game just to complete a level because the goal won’t turn off unless you finish it.
Ferguson & Bargh: achievement goal or no goal
Goal facilitating stimuli are evaluated more positively but only while the goal is still active.
Done using priming during a scrabble game, the positive evaluation only occurred when they were primed during the game not after
Ferguson experiment 4: attitude change and current goal
Automatic attitudes change as a function of the current goal state. If the goal is active, priming that goal makes things related to it be viewed more positively
Hill & Durante: priming goal of attractiveness
Unconscious goal of attractiveness/mating resulted in the changing of evaluation of dangerous but attractiveness increasing diet pills and tanning booths. Was disliked before attractiveness goal was primed and became liked after it was triggered
Melinkoff & Bailey: defending hitler study
Your unconscious attitudes towards hitler is positive if your job is to defend him. The attitude is driven by your goal and motivation and stays to attain that goal. Similarity, your unconscious attitudes towards an innocent person as a prosecutor is negative if your job is to prosecute him.
Darley & Bateson: Good Samaritan study (power of the current goal over behaviour)
Seminary students either late or not to class, encounter a sick person clearly in need. Empathy values didn’t matter, what determined the likelihood of helping was whether or not the person was late.
Fitzsimons and Shah: how much we like our friends
Scrambled sentence tests primed goal for socialization. Afterwards friends with whom you primarily socialize come to mind more easily when listing ‘good friends’ on campus
Study friends rated as closer friends than non-study friends when the achievement goal is primed
Wilson & Schooler: the trouble with thinking
Greater satisfaction with the choice they made based on a gut feeling rather than thinking carefully about which one they liked best.
Chen & Bargh. Approach and avoidance arm movements in response to stimuli
Good stimuli resulted in approach muscles to contract and pull the trigger towards you. Negative stimuli resulted in avoidance muscles to contract and push the trigger away
Velmans: what does consciousness add?
Makes things real. It gives our experience realism
What is consciousness for?
Time travel: remembering the last and planning for the future. Time travel is a conscious process and only occurs because your unconscious deals with the present. Having goals are activated by current internal need states which is also unconscious
What does the adaptive unconscious do?
It keeps us safe in the present, and allows our conscious mind to time travel
What processes are tied to the present
Unconscious processes
Evolved motives
Goals and purposes guide attention allocation, evaluation, and behaviour
Bargh & Morsella: unconscious behavioural guidance systems
Attitudes/evaluations: approach and avoidance tendencies for stimuli you like or hate
Social perception: action tendency’s such as mimicry and contagion
Lhermittes syndrome: situational action and impulse is not controllable
Dijksterhuis & Nordgen: how are the conscious and unconscious different?
Conscious processes enable a separation from reality such as imagination, time travel, simulation of the future. They are not constrained by reality.
Unconscious effects are largely triggered by objects and events in the outside world — that is, the present reality.
What is consciousness for?
Time travel: escaping reality and simulating the future
Escaping the past, doing something different, overriding influences of the past
Posner & Snyder: immediate response based on long term learning
With enough time (500 ms) we can developed short term expectancies that override long term tendencies. For example, body and furniture automatically activate their category members.
However, temporary contingencies such as a pattern will override the usual categorical assumptions with a long enough time frame. But under greater time pressure (250 ms) this does not occur. We default to our original biases
Lhermittes Syndrome
People have a lack of impulse control. Do whatever categorical thing they’ve been primed to do such as look at their own apartment as a museum or continue to drink water.
W. James: impulses
Consciousness not a source of behavioural impulses (more like a gate-keeper having veto power)
Gazzaniga: impulses
Impulses from right hemisphere, adaptive like understanding of the stimuli from the left hemisphere
Libet: impulses
Impulses come before conscious awareness of them (time and the observer)
Wegner: impulses
Conscious agency (source of impulses) is an illusion produced by attributional deduction; no true conscious causation of impulses
Long term goals override short term pleasure
The conscious mind can control impulses or behaviours suggested or driven by external events. Instead of taking short term pleasures, can forego them in favour of something with long term benefits
M. Tomasello et al: cooperation and coordination
The motivation to share psychological states and the capacity to coordinate one’s behaviour with others are what differentiates us from all other animals
Hannah Arendt: the two-in-one of consciousness
Life of the mind focuses on the subjective experience of consciousness, and of conscious life. Arendt notes that the original of bagels phenomenology of the mind was the science of the experience of consciousness and Socrates had something called the two-in-one of conscious thought
Lev Vygotsky: talking to ourselves develops into consciousness
We talk to ourselves for the first 2.5-3 years of our life out loud then silently after. Internal conscious thought capabilities grew out of external talking and communicating with other people.
Daniel Dennett: the origin of consciousness
Early use of language: to communicate image with others, ask for help but also to listen and respond to others’ requests for help. Hearing oneself then would come activate one’s own response to a help request
Dennett: what is the purpose of consciousness
Speech lead to consciousness. Hearing what you say to others shared the information across different modules and circuits of the brain.
Baars: what is the purpose of consciousness?
Global workspace — to spread information across various modules and circuits in the brain
What is consciousness for? (Complete)
- Escaping the present, remembering the past, planning for the future
- Transforming the present for self regulation and emotional regulation
- Communicating with others, getting along safely with others
Dolphin analogy for conscious and unconscious processes
Dolphins live in water but breath air so they need to go to the surface to get it. Unconscious processes are always running in the background but we rely on our consciousness to override it
Conscious and unconscious working together
Working together to solve problems and get important tasks and goals accomplished.
Preconscious analysis determines conscious experience; current goals help determine Preconscious analysis (and further conscious experience)
Rozin, Reber, Deacon et al: amnesia implicit operations
Unconscious analyses and appraisals ‘locked in’ to the mind as they are the starting points (input) for later-evolved conscious processes. Note that trauma knocks out explicit memory (amnesia) but not the implicit unconscious operations.
Kenneth Bowers: determinants of thought and action that we do not notice or appreciate
- Our understanding of the reasons for our choices and behaviour is a conscious construction necessarily based on features, events and factors of which we are consciously aware.
- The influences of the past and the future, as they are not in our present view, are often under appreciated.
Tsuchiya & Koch: continuous flash suppression technique
Stimulus presented to one eye while high contrast flashes presented to the other. The flashes suppress conscious awareness of the stimulus for a time. Participants report stimulus as soon as they can whether the stimulus is above or below a fixation point. That is the point in time the stimulus breaks into conscious awareness
Abir et al: continuous flash suppression technique
Using this technique the prioritization of unconscious processes for conscious awareness.
Following Todorov face processing research, faces higher in power and dominance broke into conscious awareness sooner than other faces
Xu, Schwarz, & Wyer: hunger as an underlying need state
50 ms presentation of a series of words was too fast for participants to tell what the word was except for hungry participants when the word was food related
Unconscious to conscious
Unconscious calls for help to conscious processes when it can’t handle something on its own. Passive frame theory and unconscious thought theory
Morsella et al: passive frame theory : what is the purpose of consciousness
To resolve conflicts involving skeletal muscles
Other conflicts resolved for us — those are not involving direct action and movement in the world
Unconscious processes asking for help from conscious processes
Eric Klinger: plans and mental control
Nagging thoughts at night keeping you up are a result of unfulfilled or pressing goals. The cure is to make concrete Ivan’s for what to do and write them down. This will turn off the nagging and make it an unconscious goal pursuit
Fichten et al: intrusive thoughts of the night
Intrusive thoughts are not easily controlled or turned off. Unconscious processes asking for help from conscious processes, working on these problems whole we sleep, but can’t solve them
Morsella, lanksa, Bargh: spontaneous thoughts of the night
Having future tasks present breed intrusive thoughts even while attempting to clear your mind
Masicampo & baumeister: consider it done study 1
Participants wrote about 2 I completed tasks they had to do then read a longish section of a mystery novel. Intrusive thoughts about the incomplete goal intruded into their awareness during reading of the novel. There was much less intrusion if they had formed a ‘when, where, and how, plan to accomplish that goal, before they started reading the novel.
Masicampo & Baumeister: making a plan decreases distracting nature of unfinished goals (study 4)
Go to list as many sea creators as they could but first had to work on an anagram task. The upcoming goal of naming sea creatures was on their mind and decreased performance on the anagrams. But not if they made a plan on how to list sea creatures.
Incomplete or interrupted goals
Goals continue to work in the background if they are important. Goals are worked on unconsciously
How does your mind know it is an important goal
Considerable conscious goal pursuit. Unconscious goal pursuit intrudes into conscious thought.
When the goal is reached come up with the solution
Nordgren, Bos, Dijksterhuis: the best of both worlds, conscious and unconscious thoughts together
Using both where each is most effective produces in the best decisions.
Conscious thought better for following clear rules
Unconscious thought is better for integrating numerous features across multiple dimensions
Most complex decisions involve following precise rules and also aggregating information. Periods of unconscious and conscious thought will give the best results
Dulany: consciousness is better at rule following
Telling participants the rule produces perfect performance from the start. This is exactly what language and sharing information gives us, gives our species an incredible advantage in accumulating knowledge and building on previous knowledge
Dr. Penfield: brain surgery
Stimulated regions of the brain and ask participants to not try and stop the action. Brain stimulation overrode the conscious will to not do the action
Gazzaniga & LeDoux: testing split brain patients
Commands and information given to right brain hemisphere, influence responses and behaviour, without the person knowing why
Libet: time and the observer
On each trial, participants asked to move their finger whenever they wanted to but to keep track on a clock when they first had the intention to move the finger. Found that Readiness potential preceded the Potential reported time of intention by about 400 milliseconds. Thus conscious intentions did precede the finger movement but well after the brain events that cause the intention. Already had the intention and goal before the impulse
Soon et al: Libet but with buttons
Same as Libet but with buttons and again the readiness potential preceded the potentials awareness of making the choice
Wegner & Wheatly: conscious intention as an attributional inference (I spy game)
We may experience conscious acts of will but they are not necessarily causal. Causality caused by 3 factors
1) priority — thought must precede action
2) consistency — thought must be consistent with observed action
3) exclusivity — thought should be the only observable cause of the action
Shariff et al: dangerous knowledge
Taking neuroscience courses reduces belief in free will compared to view at the start of the course. Also the more you study the less you believe in free will
Vohs & schooler: conclusions of free will
We should not draw conclusions about the existence of free will because then people will not act morally or ethically
Masicampo, Baumeister & DeWall: prosocial benefits of feeling free
Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness
Dawkins on readers reaction to the selfish gene
Our lives are ruled by closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions not by the cosmos
Copernicus/Galileo: earth is not centre of the universe
Earth is not the centre of the universe. It’s not even the centre of our solar system
Darwin: humans are not special
Humans are not special or have a privileged place in the cosmos. We were not created as we are today but evolved over time following the same laws as any other animal
Freud: not in control of our own minds
We are not even in control of our own minds, an unconscious mind run the show instead
Skinner: behaviouralism
Not even that — separate unconscious. Our own minds don’t matter at all because we can’t study them therefore they must not be causal. They are epiphenominal
Dawkins: the selfish gene
Not even our bodies in control it’s actually our genes. We’re just a meat machine trying to pass on our genes to the next generation.
Political vs philosophical concepts of free will
Greeks had no concept of free will, their freedom was political and actional. Free thus meant the freedom from external control, influences and constraints
Augustine argued that free will must exist because otherwise there will be no basis for gods judgement. Thus free will was the solution for evil
Psychology’s version of the free will question:
Not about free will. It’s about whether conscious thoughts are causal not whether those conscious thoughts are caused by anything else
Watson: psychology as the behaviourist sees it
Introspection discredited as an unreliable method, results did not replicate across different people thus scientific psychology should look at observable that can be verified. Therefore conscious is not scientific because it was not causal
BF skinner: radical behaviouralism
The initial premise that there was no reliable method to study internal mental states became the maxim that internal mental states were not causal
The debate within psychology for the last 100 years was about whether consciousness states were causal not about free will per se
Cognitive revolution and consciousness
Conscious thoughts are causal
Baumeister, Masicampo, and Vohs: conscious thoughts cause behaviour
Of course they do. Downward social comparison, planning, difficult choices, reappraisals, problem solving, etc
Conscious mind can change the meaning of external events
Repraisal
Rationalization
Emotional regulation
Morsella et al: passive frame theory
If unconscious cannot solve the problem, the unconscious will trigger consciousness to help solve the behavioural conflict. This is the best evidence that free will exists because
Strahan, Spencer & Zanna: subliminal messages to drink
Subliminal messages increased drinking behaviour in already-thirsty participants (need state was activated)
Karremans et al: subliminal advertising
Subliminal ads for particular brand of beverage increases choice of that beverage but only for thirsty participants
Lewin: what one intends one forgets
If the intention is not based on real need it has little chance of succeeding. If you intend to do something that you have a real need for, you pursue the goal unconsciously
Bush vs gore election campaign
Had a subliminal RATS message up that could only be seen if you watched frame by frame. Rats appeared on screen as Bureaucrats was flown in on screen
Should we be afraid of subliminal messages controlling us?
Subliminal effects only when consistent with existing need state
More likely when person has low self co girl resources
Goal contagion effects only when the goal is desirable (Aarts et al: casual sex by man who has a wife and baby at home)
Payne et al: risky betting and subliminal messages
Subliminal primes for risky behaviour in gambling game resulted in more risky bets for people that were primed for risky behaviour. Very dangerous for online betting games because it’s easy to display subliminal messages on a screen
Dan Gilbert: the assent of man
We initially believe what we hear or see and only correct it afterwards if we have had time and an inclination that it might be false which takes conscious thought. Rapid speech cortex does not give us that time so there’s no opportunity to correct it. It’s also how biases form
Harris, Bargh, Brownell: food ads prime eating behaviour
Children and adults viewed 5 min comedy clip embedded with food ads or not. Had a bowl of goldfish in front of them. The people primed with the food ads ate more goldfish
Naimi et al: effect of drinking ads on teenagers
Drinking ads viewed by teenagers only affected teens that had already drank (at least 1 drink a week)
What is a nudge?
Form of social engineering through framing of choices and subtle activation of goals to yield a desirable result
Robert Cialdini: social norms and contagious behaviour
National park signs with 3 robbers instead of 1 resulted in more people stealing redwood because people thought that that was the social norm and rushed to get theirs
Sources of unconscious influences in everyday life
From past: distant human past, own early life, recent experiences
From present: what you see is what you do, should I stay or should I go
From future: be careful what you wish for, the unconscious never sleeps
What are the four factors in the survival and safety evolved motivation?
Physical safety
Disease avoidance
Hunger
Keeping warm
Huang & Bargh: immigrants are like viruses
If you remind people about the flu virus Vaccinated individuals are less hostile toward immigrants than non-vaccinated individuals. Removing the threat satisfies your need for physical safety resulting in a more positive attitude
Ballew & Todorov: faces and completeness
Predictions under time pressure vs unlimited time did not change their choices, it just made people more certain of their choice. Predicted senatorial and gubernatorial races
Cialdini et al: carbon footprint study in Cali
1 influence on using less power was actually whether your neighbours are doing it too. This was rated as the least influential factor by participants. Highlights what you see is what you do
Kramer et al: Facebook study of peoples moods
Manipulated the news feed of some users to be either more positive or more negative then measured the positivity/negativity if the users posts the following week. Found that the users mood changed based on the mood of their news feed
Walter Mischel: delayed gratification/marshmallow study
The length for which preschool children could resist taking the marshmallow or pretzel for longer predicted teenage pregnancy, divorce rate, addiction, income at 30, and whether or not they went to college. The key to resisting the temptation was to reframe the marshmallow or pretzel into something you don’t eat or change your environment by looking away.
Tangney et al: individual differences in self control ability
Higher self control scores linked to better adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success
Galla & Duckworth: the best self control does not use “willpower”
Those that had high self control scores were more likely than others to have developed a behaviour routine and habits that become unconscious. They also remove external cues for bad habits and add external cues for good habits to link desired behaviour to the place.
Wendy wood: habits
Most effective way to self regulate and accomplish goals
Delegate control to a reliable environment
Example: getting right into workout clothes as soon as you step in the door
Gollwitzer: strategic aid to goal completion
When situation X occurs I will do Y. Greatly increases the likelihood of doing the hard thing you want to do. Specify, when, where, and under what circumstances you will do the thing you want to accomplish makes it easier to put a plan into action
How to accomplish your goals?
Get going on goals early so they can be delegated to the unconscious
Routinize goal pursuit to avoid procrastination and failure to pursue goals
Think about what higher motives, purposes, and goals are being served by your achievement and performance goals and keep these priorities and higher purposes in mind as much as you can
Wilson & Brekke: avoiding and correcting for unwanted influence
1: awareness of potential bias (most important)
2: motivation to correct bias
3: ability to control for the effect (time, available processing capacity, no distractions)
