PSYC 315 - The Modern Unconscious - Midterm 3

Stages of Goal Pursuit

**goal selection->goal pursuit->completion of attempt->self-evaluation->goal selection, etc. -When you succeed or fail at something → gives you information about whether you want to keep doing it or not -When you lose or are bad at something → then you don't want to do it anymore -Self-efficacy theory: goal tendency is increased by success and decreased by failure -Also in a better mood when you succeed → worse mood when you fail

Need to Belong

-Actual physical health consequences of not belonging -- stress, illness, shorter life span -One of the strongest cause among males in the US for early death is being lonely or unmarried (we need relationships to be healthy) -Many countries now have rules about requiring pet owners to have multiple for certain animals -Attachment is important: John Bowlby and social warmth during breastfeeding -Harry Harlow: wire vs cloth mothers...the warm cloth mother enabled a successful transition to adulthood -Use of leisure time substitute social relationships: much of our leisure time activity is devoted to meeting our deeper social needs to belong and to socialize, but mostly without our realizing it. -We watch TV shows where we know the characters. We read books where we experience the protagonist's life and relationships to others. We have pets. We prefer 'solitary' activities that involve substitute social relationships, to those that don't. -In this way we fill our social needs but without actually being with others.

unconscious behavioral guidance systems

-Attitudes/Evaluation: approach & avoidance tendencies -Social perception: action tendencies (mimicry, contagion) -Lhermitte's syndrome (JJ Gibson): situational action impulses and 'affordances'

Unconscious goal pursuit

-Can goals be triggered by external stimuli in the absence external stimuli in the absence of conscious intentions? -Will they produce the same effects as when they are effects as when they are consciously chosen?consciously chosen 1. Information processing goals 2. Achievement and performance goals 3. Interpersonal goals

Components (necessary ingredients) of Goal Pursuit and Goal selection

-Choosing one goal over another -There are many things we need to do (multiple goals active at the same time and many choices of goals to pursue in any given situation) -Goal priming or activation just one component -Reward or incentive value of the possible goals is another -Disincentives also play a role -Goal selection: Goal + Reward Value -expectancy x value -Both expectancy and value important: a person will not try hard for high value if very low expectancy of attaining it (e.g. NBA career for 4' 10" player), but also won't try hard for a sure thing of little value (low value)

Morsella et al. 2016: Passive Frame Theory

-Consciousness called to resolve behavioral conflicts -The conscious choice is not determined, it takes into account the context, the current goals etc. There is a choice involved and more than one (and conflicting) unconscious impulses for action. -The conscious choice makes the difference in what the person does. This choice cannot be made unconsciously. -There are some that unconscious processes can't solve., so we call out for help from the conscious

Real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: the perceived goals of others

-Goal contagion: We get our goals from other people, from merely perceiving their goal directed behavior or from merely thinking about the important people in our lives (psychological presence) which activates the goals we usually pursue when with them Aarts Gollwitzer & Hassin 2004: -Participants read about a person who did or did not have the goal of earning money. The protagonist was planning on a vacation and first worked on a farm for awhile, or volunteered to help at a charity organization. -Next Participants were given a chance to earn some money if they had enough time at the end of the experiment to do a further task. Dependent measure was how fast they clicked off that screen to get to the money earning task in time -The researchers also measured the participants' own actual need for money, with a question at the end of the study **Results: -Those who had previously read about the person working on the farm, compared to the person who volunteered, were more likely to choose to do the final task to earn money -Their goal strength as measured by current need for money, predicted how quickly they clicked to get to the money-making task at the end of the experiment Hamlin Hallinan & Woodward 2008 -7 month olds saw experimenter perform goal-directed or non-goal-directed action towards two small toys -hen infant given the toys, they reproduced the goal directed but not the non-goal-directed action-directed but not the non-goal-directed action -Study 2 - this happened even for unfulfilled goals; the child had to infer what the experimenter's the child had to infer what the experimenter's intention was, and then copy it. They preferred the intention was, and then copy it. They preferred the reached-for object, but not the pointed-to object Ackerman et al 2009 "You wear me out": -Watching or reading about another person who engages in difficult self-regulation for extended periods of time, in difficult self-regulation for extended periods of time, reduces the observer's own ability to self-regulate reduces the observer's own ability to self-regulate afterwards (ego depletion) -It is as if perceiving another person's use of willpower It is as if perceiving another person's use of willpower causes you to simulate doing the same thing they are, causes you to simulate doing the same thing they are, and this internal simulation taps into the same limited and this internal simulation taps into the same limited willpower resource The Briefcase and the Backpack: -Priming and the Prisoner's Dilemma Game -Backpack → people are more cooperative in a prisoner's dilemma game -Symbol idea of different types of behavior are relevant here Olfactory goal priming: -Holland, Hendriks, and Aarts (2005): can the mere perception of odor directly guide action plans? -Participants were exposed to the scent of all-purpose cleaner without any conscious awareness of the presence of the scent. -Next, as a measure of goal-setting, participants were asked to list five participants were asked to list five activities that they wanted to do during the rest of the day. -They were also given a rather crumbly biscuit to eat and the experimenters measured how many times they attempted to clean the crumbs off the table. -Results: people in the clean smelling room were more likely to clean up the crumbs

Personal past

-Lack of trust of one's partner as a result of attachment with your parents. Even though you don't remember this part of your life, attachment at age 1 (Strange Test) predicts social abilities in grade school, number of friends in high school, and how long their relationships last in their 20s -Thus, if you have feelings of trust vs no trust, maybe other people around you can tell you about that part in your life! Maybe you weren't exactly a well-attached baby. So it's important to reflect on whether it's really about the person you are with or not! -We also soak up feelings about outgroups from our culture! While this tendency may have been useful in the past when there was tribal fighting, these feelings are so ingrained in us and we from judgments of those different from us. -People even with good intentions still show bias. -Police officer's dilemma: the immediate tendency, related to your gut instinct, is always there. There are both explicit racisim and implicit racism.

Morewedge intuition studies

-People trust their intuitions as if it were a supernatural message ("Voice of God") -Dreams taken as premonitions -Unconscious thought somehow unworldly, not-me, spiritual, demonic -Descartes, Searle - conscious thought as original, I am the source - unconscious thought comes from somewhere else, not me

Implicit learning based on past experience/Statistical Learning

-Statistical Learning: ability to pick up rules and patterns without trying to -Standard way: participants presented with 'random' letter strings and asked to look for regularities or outliers. Then they are given test strings and asked whether they followed the grammar of the strings you saw earlier. We tend to pick this up and answer correctly better than chance. We picked up the rules without really having to try! -This study tells us that statistical learning is a natural way we learn from the rule without trying -Perhaps we have intuitions to help us make predictions about what will happen next

real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: external reminders about one's own goals

1. Ten Commandments study: Merely trying to recall all of the 10 Commandments caused participants to be more honest and moral afterwards, when given an opportunity to cheat

Behavioral influences of television and advertising

1. food ads prime eating behavior: -Children and adults viewed 5 min TV comedy show clip -Embedded were food ads (snack and healthy) or control ads -Bowl of "Goldfish" snack crackers made available 2. Alcohol ads and teenage drinking: Naimi et al (2016) -National sample over 1000 teenagers -Effect of ads only on teens already drinking (at least one drink a week)

Affect without Cognition

Fiske's 'Category based affect': immediate affect without separate systems -when you constantly have something associated with good or bad, it gets incorporated into your feelings -So that when you see something in the future, the association with good or bad come automatically

Free Will or Your Will?

It should be less so of a question of free will, but more so a question of your will (people have different motivations) -Subliminal advertising affects people with those underlying need states -Ex: thirsty goal and need to drink -Ex: dieting prime only works on obese individuals with the need to want to go on a diet -Power doesn't corrupt everyone because not everyone has selfish goals -We can't cause somebody to do something they don't already want to do -We will have less free will than if we take other influences into account (being aware of these influences actually makes us have more free will) -We can identify where/when we don't have "free will" and then do something about it

Cognitive Psychology

Neisser 1976 book on psychology: -Doesn't tell us about how people think in the real world -That is determined by their purposes and goals George Miller agrees with this: -He is maybe the parent of cognitive science -Explicitly says that mental life is about what you are trying to do and your purposes James: -Psychology is the science of mental life/what the person is trying to do -Outside material isn't useful

Escaping the past, doing something different, overriding influences of the past

Posner & Snyder 1975 BODY vs. FURNITURE study: immediate responses based on long term learning -With enough time (500 ms), we can develop short term expectancies that override long term tendencies Lhermitte's Syndrome: -These people were at the mercy of the world around them -Actions were based on context -They were at the mercy of outside cues to tell them what to do -But the rest of us have a second system that allows us to control our behavior (if it conflicts with our present goals) Impulses: -We have impulses, but we don't have to do what they suggest -We don't will things to happen → operates like a gate -Conscious mind can control the impulses or behaviors suggested or driven by external events -Instead of taking short term easy pleasures, can forego them in favor of better long term alternative benefits -Delay of gratification

Unconscious goal pursuit: Achievement Goal Priming

Study gave participants a maze or words to look at but the words had to do with a certain goals (e.g. win, achieve, compete...) -Those words would affect them later, where those in the primed condition outperformed people that did not have the achievement goal primed

Mental Contamination

Wilson and Brekke 1994: "Mental Contamination" -avoiding and correcting for unwanted influences -To do so, you need : i) awareness of potential bias ii) motivation to correct for bias iii) ability to control for the effect (time, available processing capacity, no distractions)

Unconscious Thought Theory

"The best of both worlds: Conscious and unconscious thought together" -Using both where each is most effective produces the best decisions. -Conscious thought better for following clear rules -Unconscious thought better for integrating numerous features across multiple dimensions (complexity) Consciousness is better at rule following (Dulany 1968) -Telling participants the rule produces perfect performance from the start -This may seem very obvious, but this is exactly what language and sharing of information gives us, gives our species, an incredible advantage in accumulating knowledge, and building on what previous generations have learned -A first period of conscious thought (to cull the rule violating apartments from further consideration), followed by a period of unconscious thought to fairly and equally weight all relevant features), results in the best decisions.

Sherman's cigarette study

-Implicit and explicit attitudes towards smoking -Participants were smokers in either a nicotine need state (4 hours without cigarette) or not (allowed to smoke just before experiment) -Compared sequential priming and IAT measures of implicit attitudes towards smoking, with explicit attitudes -With need state: positive implicit attitudes -No need state: negative implicit attitudes -Explicit and implicit attitudes are not correlated -Implicit evaluative system is sensitive to current need states and contexts; changing the motivational state changes the implicit attitude toward smoking

Where do gut feelings (intuitions) come from?

- gut feelings/intuitions are clearly positive or negative feelings of which you are unaware of the source or reason 1. Fundamental, evolved motives - example: towards immigration or severity of a crime 2. Personal past (early experience, culture) - example: lack of feeling of trust for one's partner 3. Recent past (carryover from previous situation) - example: attraction towards date after watching scary movie together 4. The Present (Contagion and context) - example: moral judgments about littering or diet pills or cheating in self reported success at coin toss game 5. The Future (active goals) - evaluating people and objects as well as behavioral choices in terms of how they help or hinder that goal 6. Implicit memory effects: Patient pulls her hand back with the pin even though she didn't remember it; she trusted her intuition 7. Implicit learning based on past experience

Goal contagion + Projection of goals

-Communal vs Exchange Relationship Orientation determines how we react to power (power is activating a social goal) -Goal contagion: People picked up other people's goals and absorbed them as their own, but we also project our own goals onto other people -What is active in our mind determines what we will do: Goes both directions, where projections and contagion are two different directions of the same phenomenon -Projective tests Kawada et al (2004): -Projection of one's own motives onto others -NYU study were they staged situations where the person was induced to be helpful with the experimenter (had a leg brace on and couldn't walk easily) -Induced (situational pressure) to help, or to be nosy -Now put them in a study to rate how helpful someone is -Afterwards, more likely to perceive another person as helpful, or nosy if they were primed

How genes determine our goals

-Evolutionary biologists talk about how evolutionary processes happen so slowly that there is no way these changes can anticipate the rapid changes in human culture -The genes run the show by establishing the goals we have (ex. finding food, disease avoidance) -Our behaviour is guided by our goals (based on current rules of where we happen to be)

What is the purpose of consciousness?

-1980: to do everything. Think, choose, behave etc. -Bandura (1986): everything a person decides, does, chooses, is done through deliberate conscious thought -BUT past 40 years of research has found that so much of these can be done without conscious intent or awareness -Mischel et al 1997 - unconscious thought is the source of impulses, addictions, problems - conscious thought does all the rest -Freud's "malevolent unconscious" -System 1 makes the errors, System 2 corrects -evil spirits and demonic possession But why and how would such a maladaptive system evolve in the first place? -Gerd Gigerenzer: Fast and Frugal" judgments -Going with gut vs thinking about preferences for CD or poster as gift; satisfaction was higher with gut instinct choice What does consciousness add ? -Velmans 2001: make things "real" give our experience "real-ism"

The Political vs Philosophical Concepts of Free Will

-Arendt distinguished between freedom (political concept) and free will (philosophical concept): -Ancient Greeks had no concept of free will; their concept of freedom was political and actional -"Free" thus meant freedom from external control, from external influences and constraints -Political science, as a field, would not exist without this external version of the concept of free will. -Philosophical free-will was thus originally a Christian concept: Augustine argued that [psychological] free will must exist because otherwise no basis for God's judgment on us; assignment to heaven versus hell would otherwise be arbitrary and unfair -The concept of free will was therefore a theological solution to the problem of evil: How could an all-good God permit evil to exist in the world? -Augustine's answer: God is not the source of evil but must allow its possibility, in order to judge our lives and enable us to earn our eternal reward -The concept of free will is thus a religious concept -As opposed to political concept, in which 'free' means 'free from external control', the philosophical concept of free will holds that our will is free from unintentional internal controllers.

Implementation Intentions

-Implementation Intentions: a strategic aid to goal completion -When Situation X occurs, I will do Y. -Delegate control to outside environment -Greatly increases likelihood of doing the hard thing you want to do Examples: 1. Christmas study- telling father you love him "When I get off the train, I will tell my father I love him." 2. Taking advantage of time-limited opportunities: Retorting back to racist comments 3. Health Psychology: elderly taking their medication "When I get back to my room, I will take my pills." 4. Voter turnout in 2008 Democratic primary in PA "When I get my lunch break on Tuesday, I will get on a bus to get to my polling place and vote."

Kahneman & Klein 2009

-Experts' intuitions can be trusted if there is feedback -Experts' intuitions or gut feelings put to the test - do further tests (outcomes) bear them out? -In other words, if you have lots of experience that gives you feedback as to if those actions are right or wrong, then you can test your intuitions -Stockbrokers, advertisers - e.g., Jerry Dellafemina - the successful ones are those whose ideas happen to work. -Kahneman - it was pure luck. There are many prospectors: some find the vein of gold and others don't. -Related to Mere Exposure Effect: the more you are exposed to something and it doesn't harm you, the more you can trust it. so the greater the likelihood you will like it. -We don't get the mere exposure effect with things that are actively negative (like a mean dog)

Attention without awareness

-Focus of conscious attention determines whether it is conscious or unconscious thought -"Thinking about which car to buy while attention is focused on the cars is conscious thought. focused on the cars is conscious thought. -Thinking about which car to buy while attention is directed elsewhere is unconscious thought."

Unconscious motivation

-Freud argued it was a separate, pre-conscious unconscious, full of destructive motives and drives... Non-Freudian psychologists: -What we believe we are motivated to do and what we implicitly strive for are two different things -Alignment of explicit and implicit motives -Karen Horney: much more socially oriented -Anxiety and worries are related to conflict between who you are seen to be and who you want to be inside -Difference between public and private self concepts -Believed in non-conscious motivations but have motivations that seem more plausible

Interplay between conscious and unconscious processes

-Freud uses the example of an iceberg, but this is a bad example because the iceberg is static -Better example would be dolphins, where they come out of the water impacts where they are in the air, so there is a dynamic interplay between both processes Conscious and Unconscious Together: -Working together to solve problems and get important things done -But they might have different strengths -Analyses of the world can happen pre-consciously, which impacts our behaviors and goals -Preconscious analysis determines conscious experience; current goals help determine preconscious analysis (and further conscious experience) Rozin, Reber, Deacon, et al. -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 Unconscious 'calls for help' to conscious processes when it can't handle something on its own

"I Spy" Game

-Game where participants hands are one computer mouse -As they move around, headphones play names of different objects (induces the thought before the action) -Person thinks they caused their movements to land on certain objects -If you hear the object, you have the thought right before it lands on it (adds to the feeling that you caused it (thought of it right before you landed on it) -You don't think you caused it if the headphone input happens too far before or after (but if they hear it right before hand → think they caused the movement) -Our feeling of will is a cause of attribution

Similarities of Conscious and Unconscious Goal Pursuit

-Goal activation can be unconscious -Goal operation can be unconscious -Goal operation extends over time -Unconsciously pursued goal produces same outcomes as conscious pursuit of same goal -Same motivational qualities apply: persistence, resumption, and self-evaluation

Goal autonomy and Goal turn-off effects

-Goal autonomy means independence from your intentions and wishes -goals can turn off even if you want them to stay on 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. For a period after completion, then, even goals that are desirable all become inactive and inhibited Study Examples: 1. Monin and Miller (2001): -Participants were given the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist comments -This fulfilled (completed) their goal to be egalitarian and non-sexist -They were then more more willing than a control willing than a control group to recommend a man rather than a group to recommend a man rather than a woman for a stereotypically male job. woman for a stereotypically male job. 2. Bargh, Green, Fitzsimons: -Participants actively engaged in helping a specific other person with a picture-identification task were more willing to give money to a charitable cause than did control participants for whom the helping goal was not currently active. They also pledged more of their actual time to help a stranger (the honors student) with her research project. -Participants no longer engaged in helping the confederate (i.e., that experimental task had been completed) were now less likely to donate to charity or help the honors student, compared to control condition. -Because the goal of helping was achieved Real Life Example: Sports -Sports teams get really excited when they score as if they won the game -But coaches found out it's not good when you celebrate it's like the goal is over, then the rest of the game, performance decreases -Thus, coaches say we will not celebrate until we are done

Goal autonomy and goal staying on when you DO want them on

-Goal interruption studies: ppl resume task when they are interrupted because goal still works in the background -Goals continue to work in the background (if it's important) -"incubation effects":the unconscious never sleeps -Trying to remember something that "you know that you know" -Answer often 'pops into your head' later on while doing something else entirely, sometimes you've forgotten you even wanted to remember it

Important conscious goals continue to be worked on unconsciously, when conscious attention is diverted from them

-Goals continue to work in the background (if they're important) -Ghiselin (1952): The Creative Process - Answers come to us in dreams, while distracted (Eureka moments!)

Environment, Executive Processes, Goals

-Goals impact our selection of environment and our executive processes (responses/higher mental processes) -Outside environment and executive processes can also trigger goals -Tetris dreams: Played so much tetris that their whole world started to look like tetris

Psychology's Version of the Free Will Question

-It is not really about free will -It is about whether conscious thoughts are causal -Not whether those conscious thoughts are caused by anything else

Goal facilitating stimuli are evaluated more positively - but only while the goal is still active

-Kurt Lewin: behaviors, objects, events etc. are evaluated in terms of how they facilitate or hinder your current goal -Achievement goal or no goal -(Temporary) liking for stimulus features that (temporarily) help goal attainment -Word search task: told they get extra points if they find nouns and also extra points if the words start with 'C' -Now it is positive to see C and nouns -After the task is over, there is no more effect because it is not helping the goal anymore -Automatic attitudes change as function of current goal state -Automatic attitudes towards food related stimuli -Subliminal eating goal primes: eat, taste, hungry -Food-related attitude objects: food, snacks Hill and Durante: -Primed goal of attractiveness (mating) -This unconscious goal changed evaluations of dangerous but attractiveness increasing diet pills and tanning booths -What was disliked and disapproved of became liked and approved of, depending on the currently active goal Melknikoff & Bailey persecutor study: -goal is to serve as prosecutor in a trial, when you know the defendant is innocent or, to defend the accused whom you know is guilty -What is your implicit, automatic attitude (IAT, AMP) towards the defendant? What determines it? -Your unconscious attitude towards Hitler is positive if your job is to defend him. The attitude is driven by your goal and motivation, and serves to help attain that goal. -Similarly, your unconscious attitude towards an innocent person is negative if your job is to prosecute him. "Good Samaritan" study -Power of current goal over behavior -seminary students, either intentionally made late or not to a class -made them encounter a sick person clearly in need, on the way -empathy, values etc. didn't matter: what determined likelihood of helping was whether the person was late or not Liking for friends, closeness of relationships: We evaluate our friends, how much we like them, in terms of how they help or hinder our active goals -scrambled sentence test primed socializing goal socialize, party... -Afterwards, friends with whom you primarily socialize (versus study, work out with, etc) come to mind more easily when listing your 'good friends on campus' -When primed with achievement goal, study friends rated as 'closer' friends than non study friends; no difference in how close you feel to them when goal is not primed -Other examples: -disgust vs. sadness + Pricing Valuation study -Waiter vs Crime reporter study

But why and how would such a maladaptive system evolve in the first place?

-Less of a question of 'can', more a question of 'when can' you trust your intuitions -Intuitions come from implicit processes: evolved mechanisms that are generally adaptive -In domains of expertise and considerable past experience with feedback regarding being right or wrong they are helpful, even essential, and should be trusted -take intuitions seriously but check them for biases (stereotypes) and examine take intuitions seriously but check them for biases (stereotypes) and examine their factual bases. Above all, eliminate the supernatural interpretations (e.g., their factual bases. Above all, eliminate the supernatural interpretations (e.g., dreams)

Susan Andersen: Transference

-Morphed photos of a novel person with a loved one -Extent of contribution of loved-one photo predicted liking for new person -We think that if someone resembles someone else, we assume they have the same characteristics

Real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: common, naturally occurring contexts

-Most powerful determinant of our behavior is the setting of where we are -Related to norms which are very powerful (we do what we are supposed to do in these settings) -Situational Cues to Behavior: features of commonly experienced situations can also activate behavioral tendencies, promote conformity to social norms Situated identities: -investment banker study -the silence of the library study -Voting behavior in church vs. school study Cultural identity cues (multiple identities + diff goals associated with diff identities): -Asian girls in math study

How do conscious and unconscious thought processes differ?

-Overall, conscious processes enable a separation from reality - imagination, simulation of the future -- they are not constrained by reality as are unconscious processes. -Unconscious effects are largely triggered by objects and events in the outside world - that is, the present reality

real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: situational power

-Power is a feature of situations, thus the concept of power can become strongly associated with the representations of the goals people pursue when they have power -Because power by definition means the ability to get your important goals (no interference by others blocking your way), power will tend to become associated with a person's most important goals. Power thus affords an opportunity to get what you otherwise can't get so easily. -Over time this association may become automatic, in that having power activates one's important goals without one's intention or awareness. -Does power corrupt everyone? -Kipnis 1972: "yes" -giving people power makes them more self-centered and less concerned about others -causes them to devalue those who are less powerful, in terms of their ability and worth -Power and Corruption -Corrupting influence of power on power-holder (David Kipnis) -Case of sexual harassment (power is ability to attain desired goal and sex is the desired goal) -Power situations automatically activate (prime) sex goals in sexual harassers and aggressors The influence of power on attraction- Bargh et al 1995, Study 2: -Males selected high or low on ASA (high or low in sexual harassment tendencies) -Participate together with female confederate on "study on visual illusions" -No interaction between them -Later moved to separate rooms and asked questions about their experience in the experiment -The key question was how attractive he found the confederate and whether he would like to be in another study with her -Results found that people who were high on ASA didn't find her attractive (no power activated), but if you activate power, then they find them attractive -Power doesn't corrupt everyone: Power activates a person's important goals, but not everyone's important goals are self-centered. -It depends on what your important interpersonal goals are (communally vs exchange oriented participants) -Communal relationship orientation (power-> other-oriented goals) vs Exchange relationship orientation (power->selfish goals) -Power primed situationally (not verbally) through sitting either in 'professor's chair' behind desk in office, or in 'student chair' in front of the desk -Then completed measures of racism, and concern with social approval -People behind the professor's desk were less concerned with what others thought -Maybe power doesn't corrupt us → it just reveals our true motivations (situational power reveals the person's most important goals)

The Agentic Self

-Related to willpower, denying yourself temptations, control your impulses through acts of will and struggle -Bandura said conscious choice is involved in all behaviors and judgments and all self regulation is conscious and intentional -Neisser speaks of a homunculus in our head that drives our behavior "Many crucial functions of the self involve volition: making choices and decisions, taking responsibility, initiating and inhibiting behavior, and making plans of action and carrying out those plans. The self exerts control over itself and over the external world" -Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice (1998)

Nudges and Budges

-Social engineering through framing of choices and subtle activation of goals -Anti-Drug Ad of brain = egg being fried actually increased drug purchase behavior! Ppl thought it was cool -Texas road signs of death tolls actually increased accidents and related deaths Norms: -Robert Cialdini: National park signs and social disobedience -Norms are important! -When there were multiple thieves on the posters, ppl thought it was the norm for people to steal -Cialdini et al 2008 carbon footprint, reduction in energy use in California, a field study -greatest influence on using less power was whether neighbors were doing so (this was rated as least influential factor by participants)

Conscious Flash Suppression technique

-Stimulus presented to one eye while high contrast flashes presented to the other eye -The flashes suppress conscious awareness of the stimulus for a time -Something can therefore be presented subliminally for a very long time (30 seconds to a minute) How quickly can you consciously see different things? -When you present different faces, you find that faces that are higher in power and dominance broke into consciousness faster -The ones that are more of a threat break through consciousness faster Hunger -Hunger as underlying need state -50 millisecond presentation of a series of words -Too fast for participants to tell what the word was, except for hungry participants when the words were food related

Should we be afraid of subliminal advertising?

-Subliminal advertising leads to worries about influences outside of awareness and mind control -It's important to remember that subliminal effects only when consistent with an existing need state [e.g., when hungry, more likely to notice very brief food related stimuli] -Subliminal effects more likely when low in self control resources -Goal contagion effects only when the goal is desirable (e.g. Aarts et al. 2004 - casual sex by man who has a wife and baby at home) That being said... -Payne et al 2016: Subliminal primes for risk taking behavior in gambling game -More risky bets with risk-related primes -High N, high power, very robust behavioral, priming effect Dan Gilbert 1991- "the assent of man" -We initially believe what we hear or see and only correct it afterwards if we have time and inclination -Rapid speech often does not give us that time or opportunity to correct

Unconscious influences

-Unconscious influences= "Determinants of thought and action that we do not notice or appreciate" (Kenneth Bowers, 1984) 1. Our understanding of the reasons for our choices and behavior is a conscious construction necessarily based on features, events and factors of which we are consciously aware 2. The influences of the past and the future, as they are not in our present view, are often under-appreciated.

Is studying free will "dangerous knowledge"?

-Vohs & Schooler 2008: We should not draw conclusions about existence of free will, because then people will not act morally or ethically. -When people are given these research articles saying we don't have free will: they become more likely to cheat and be immoral as well as more likely to be aggressive and hostile -Shariff et al. 2014: Taking neuroscience courses reduces belief in free will - compared to the start of the course. Also, they found that the more students studied for the class, the less they believed in free will The steady, relentless dethronement of humans, dethronement of humans, from 1400s to present: -Galileo: earth is not the center of the universe. it's not even the center of our solar system -Darwin: humans are not special or have a privileged place in the cosmos. We were not privileged place in the cosmos. We were not created as we are today, but evolved over time created as we are today, but evolved over time following the same laws as any other animal.following the same laws as any other animal -Freud: we are not even in control of our own minds, an unconscious mind runs the show instead -Skinner: Not even that - our own minds don't matter at all, they are epiphenomenal -Dawkins: Not even our bodies matter, they are just meat machines to carry our genes into the next generation!

Intention and arguing against intention

-We are aware of willing something and then doing it -Ex. I want a soda, so I will get up and get one from the fridge -We have the intention for something before we do it Wegner and Wheatley (1999) argue against this; they say we never perceive causation directly. Instead, it is always an inference -David Hume: When we infer causality, the cause came before the event, not after -We may experience conscious acts of will, but these are not necessarily causal. Our sense that they are causal role is an attribution we make, driven 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

Real-Life Triggers of Unconscious Goal Pursuit

-the 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

Joel Weinberger guest lecture

-We are told there is a jar with 100 personality descriptions where 90 are for engineers and 10 for artists -When we are asked someone is described as "Creative and emotionally sensitive," we guess artist -Why did we go with the wrong answer even though we know the odds? -Because of implicit bias, no matter the categories -We are aware to some degree that we are here to achieve. We want to be around others and have close relationships with other people -The unconscious → nothing is entirely conscious or unconscious (We are aware of what he said, but not of ignoring what he said) -We operate in terms of associative networks and we are biased because from very early ages, we form networks -Unconscious processes are necessary because our mind operates in parallel with our body -This may lead to some problems, but also means we cannot be conscious of everything going on (there is too much going on)

Thin slices + faces

-We can get lots of intuitions and ideas about people and their personalities even from a couple of seconds -but intuitions coming from non-static info about other ppl is much more useful -only problem is that faces are actually not diagnostic of the traits we immediately perceive in them -Then why do we 'see' these traits, and are so strongly affected by faces in our judgments of others (even voting behavior)? Thin slices: Ambady & Rosenthal 1992 -From brief 30 sec exposures to expressive behaviors, people can predict with good accuracy many social and clinical outcomes: teacher effectiveness, therapist effectiveness, gender of person being spoken to, depression in patients -Having longer time (5 minutes) didn't change accuracy

Invisibility Cloak Illusion

-We check out others but don't think anyone is checking us out. -Everyone says they look at others more than others look at them -Why don't we generalize what we are doing to other people? -Do we prefer to feel invisible?? -We believe that we think about others more than they think about us -We believe that we like new acquaintances more than they like us -Why are we not using the egocentric bias in all these cases? -The spotlight effect: not the general effect, but when they feel self-conscious, they thought everybody was looking at them

Five Thirty Eight

-Website that started as predicting baseball now also predicts politics. -Predicted the presidential election extremely accurately

Mere Exposure Effect; How does it happen?

-Zajonc 1968, 1980: greater liking for 'old' than 'new' in the absence of ability to discriminate old from new at better than chance.from new at better than chance -Implicit memory effect: greater liking for previously presented stimuli, in absence of conscious recognition How does it happen? -The more a stimulus is presented, the more easily it is processed the next time. -Buildup and sharpening of internal perceptual representation -This 'ease of processing' = perceptual fluency = is an important meta-cognitive signal that we use to 'trust' our perceptual experiences

Custers & Aarts 2005

-doing puzzles, studying, going for a walk -conditioned these activities with positive, neutral, or negative stimuli (subliminally) -Participants later tended to prefer to engage in the activity associated with positive stimuli -Motivation Level = Goal Selection + Incentive -Showed you could influence choice of future behavior if you subliminally show high reward and goal

Ghiselin 1952: 'the creative process'

-famous scientists and artists -answers come to them in their dreams, or while shaving... i.e., while conscious thought is not engaged while conscious thought is not engaged -BUT always after much conscious thought about the problem!

Your currently active goal changes you

-your choices and decisions -your likes and dislikes -who your best friends are -the health risks you are willing to take -what you notice and pay attention to

Tetlock 2002: Evolved motivations for social life

-intuitive politicians, prosecutors, theologians, scientists -Each of us is all of these at one time or another -Which one depends on the context and circumstances -But different goals, different values, different behaviors, different ways of handling evidence - leading to apparent inconsistencies (i.e., hypocrisy) ... as opposed to 'true self' or central, stable values and principles

Time-Travel (remembering the past, and planning for the future)

-mental simulations -Unconscious processes deal with the present, evaluating as good or bad, inducing approach or avoidance -having goals activated by current internal need states or external opportunity conditions -these goals then guide behavior towards important goals -This frees up conscious processes to time travel, recall the past, or plan for the future -The adaptive unconscious: Keeping us safe in the present, allowing conscious mind to time travel Past, Present, and Future -unconscious processes are tied to the present -evolved motives guide behavior in the present -goals and purposes guide attention allocation, evaluation, and behavior in the present

What is consciousness for?

1) Time-travel (remembering the past, and planning for the future) 2) Escaping the past, doing something different, overriding influences of the past 3) Communication with others; collaboration and coordination of activities; keeping on good terms with others in our group

real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: mere thought about significant others

1. Airport study -San Francisco International Airport: walk in and go to the gate -Collected data from people waiting for their flight or arriving flights -Asked people to fill out questionnaires (condition was either describe friends or coworkers) -Then ask if they would mind doing an additional 15 minute questionnaire -More likely say yes if they were in the friend condition -Thinking about friends puts you in a mood to be helpful -But thinking about co workers might make you be competitive 2. Priming 'Mom' study: -Asked students early in the semester what their goals are, in relation to other people -Lots of people said they want to make their moms proud of them -3 months later, they were asked questions about their mother (ex. where does she live, what are their hobbies → not about the relationship) -Then did an unrelated verbal task to see how well they did -Results: if they had initially had the goal to make their mom proud and then thought about their mom, they did much better -If they didn't have the goal, talking about their mother → no effect -If they did have the goal, but didn't talk about their mother → no effect -It was like just thinking about their mother activates the psychological presence of her being there

Three ways goals can be active

1. Conscious choice and intention (will): -We make the decision to do something -We can verbally report on it 2. Internal States (emotion, primary need, recent thought) -Reactions to the world -usually out of our control 3. External stimuli associated with a goal, need or motive

Self-Regulation (mind control by yourself)

1. Delay of Gratification -Conscious mind can control the impulses or behaviors suggested or driven by external events -Instead of taking short term easy pleasures, can forego them in favor of better long term alternative benefits -Marshmallow Test: Preschool children tested to see how long they could delay gratification. Most important ability enabling the delay of gratification was the ability to cognitively transform the stimulus (marshmallow or pretzel stick). Study found that the kids who were told to imagine them as 'fluffy clouds' or 'logs' did the best (as measured by how long they could wait to eat them). Researchers followed up with these same children years later and found that how long the person could wait at age 4 predicted teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, college grades, income at age 30, divorce rates

Sources of unconscious influences in everyday life

1. From the Past -Distant Human Past -Your Own Early Life -Your Recent Experiences 2. From the Present -What You See is What You Do -Should I Stay or Should I Go 3. From the Future -Be Careful What You Wish For -The Unconscious Never Sleeps

Many psychologists have argued that actions and behaviors are due to impulses and not conscious intentions or plans to do with awareness or will

1. Gazzaniga (1985) -The Social Brain -With LeDoux, toured New England in a van -Looked at split brain patients -Showed that giving a posthypnotic suggestion could hypnotize people -But then the hypnotized ppl immediately come up with an explanation -Ex. snap fingers and get on the floor but then when they do it "I lost my earring..." -They come up with reasons for why they are doing things after the fact -His argument that this is our own conscious understanding (to construct meaning for what we already did) 2. Penfield at McGill University, 1950s -Brain surgery on epilectic patients -While brain was exposed, stimulated areas with electric current -Patients remembered things with rich sensory detail that they probably wouldn't have remembered otherwise (ex. childhood memories) -Felt like they were reliving this experience -Theory is that we do have memory from all our life, but we just can't access it very well -Direct stimulation of their brains lead to involuntary movements (against their will) -Evidence that not everything we do is from our direct intention 3. Libet 1985 -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 -Recorded brain readiness potential (RP) throughout each trial -Found that RP preceded the P's reported time of intention by about 400 milliseconds -Thus conscious intention did precede the finger movement, but well after the brain events that cause the intention -Evidence that freewill doesn't exist because we are experiencing something that already happened in our mind and calling it our own will -Problem: In this experiment we are given a goal to press the button so we are given a conscious goal in the sense that they are doing what they are told to do, so it is conscious will (they are told explicitly to do what they are doing) 4. Soon et al. (2010) -Modified Libet procedure, where now participants made a choice which of two buttons to press on a given trial -Found same results of RP preceding the P's awareness of making the choice 5. Haggard et al: -Subliminal cues influence choice -Have to choose either left or right arrow keys -But right before they have to choose, either a right or left arrow is subliminally presented -Increases chances of pressing that button -Their choice is being influenced, but it is still a choice -Is this evidence against free will?

Autonomous Goal Operation

1. Goals become active independently of '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 same outcomes and in same manner as do consciously pursued goals

real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: threats and need states

1. Homeostasis and Equilibrium: Goal is triggered by situational cues -Motivated to maintain normalcy, equilibrium -For example - hunger makes you seek food, thirst makes you seek water, cold makes you seek warmth -Motivated to maintain normalcy, equilibrium -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 Also true of social norms: -When people are rejected in online ball game, makes people feel colder -Also makes you want to re-establish a need to belong (need for affiliation) -Ball rejection study: people prefer warm foods for lunch afterwards if they were rejected Hunger -hunger makes you buy more at the supermarket, unless you eat a 'test muffin' first -but hunger also makes you buy more at Walmart and Target (self-reported hunger correlates with amount of money spent, on shoppers' store receipts leaving the store) -Hungry people also take more, and buy more, binder clips when given the opportunity, compared to non-hungry people Physiological Needs: -People with addiction to cigarettes is like a standard, visceral kind of need -Loewenstein 1996: Need states guide behavior -When inactive, person does not feel the need is very strong and anticipates no problem controlling it later -But when active, → body's physiological state takes over and you can't control the desire for alcohol/smoking anymore

Does Free Will exist?

1. If, by free will, we mean whether conscious thoughts are causal, the answer is clearly 'yes' 2. If, by free will, we mean whether your will is an original cause, that it itself is not caused by anything else, then the answer is clearly 'no'

Autonomy of goal pursuits

1. Once triggered, operate in service of that goal 2. Effects on attention, evaluation, choices, behavior 3. Continue to operate until completed (esp. for important goals) 4. Turn off when completed

Unconscious goal pursuit: Interpersonal goals

1. Resource Management Game: -Read a story where people in the fishing company were trying to catch as much fish as possible, but they can't overfish in order to make sure the population don't disappear -Either told to put fish back into the back or not -Either primed with cooperation or not -Number of fish they threw back was related to cooperation: most cooperation was in explicit and instruction categories; least cooperation where there was no explicit or implicit cooperation goal -People that were told they needed to cooperate knew they were supposed to **After the fishing task, participants from diff. conditions were asked for self-ratings of how much they tried to cooperate. In condition they consciously knew they were supposed to cooperate, there was some correlation. BUT this didn't happen in the implicit cooperation group! They couldn't tell you that they were cooperating. In other words, we still get affected, but there is no awareness afterwards 2. Study with 18 month olds: -When they saw dolls in a friendly, bonded relation, they helped the experimenter more than kids in other conditions -Seeing dolls together primes cooperation

Our active goals and motivations

1. Those future states we are trying to attain: -Really wanting something and trying hard, really striving for something -Help us get to our next goal in life 2. Those present states we are trying to maintain -Also about avoiding things -Trying to maintain homeostasis (not being too hot or cold) -Being safe -Trying to avoid moving away from where you are right now (not lose the good things that you have)

Unconscious motivation and social life

1. We get our goals from other people, from merely perceiving their goal directed behavior (contagion) 2. We project our own goals onto other people when forming impressions of them or interpreting the reasons for their behavior (social perception) 3. Having power over others activates our own personally important goals (social context) 4. We pursue social goals such as the need to belong even when we think we are doing something else, such as just relaxing or being entertained, as shown by our choices of leisure time activities 5. We are often blind to our (unconsciously operating) motivations to be 'invisible' to others (not detected) and when we have disagreements with others (we are objective, so they are the ones who must be biased).

Motivation without Cognition

Bargh 1990 'Auto-motives': goals become tied to their usual situations -If you always tie the same goal to the same cognition, then it will become association in the same way that association with affect is -You don't have to make a choice, it's already made for you -Investment banker study: Asking them to describe their workplace activates goal of making money and they were more likely to cheat to make more money (reported more heads tossed) -"Silence of the Library" study: Students taking a note to either the library or the cafeteria. Along the way, they are quieter and talk more softly in the hallways, if they are on their way to the library compared to the cafeteria.

Behaviorism and Radical Behaviorism

Behaviorism: -John B. Watson: Father of Behaviorism -Introspection (self report of internal states) discredited as unreliable method, results did not replicate across different people -Thus 'scientific psychology' should look only at observables, that a second party can verify/replicate -Internal states, such as consciousness, are therefore "unscientific" -Over time, the behaviorists' premise that internal conscious states could not be studied by reliable scientific methods, and so were not 'scientific' topics of study...morphed into the position that consciousness itself was not causal, that it did not play a role in production of behavior or even the higher mental processes Radical Behaviorism: -BF Skinner: Verbal Behavior -The initial premise that there was no reliable method (yet) to study internal mental states became the maxim that internal mental states were not causal -The debate within psychology for the last 100 years, since Watson's article in 1913, has been on whether conscious states were causal, not about free will per se

Unconscious goal pursuit: change in mood

Chartrand (1999): -Induced goals with word searches -Then have participants wok on something that is a filler task of anagrams that were either impossible to solve or really easy to solve -They told people it wasn't even important, but if they had the goal of achievement...failure made them really sad afterwards and success made them really happy -If they hadn't been primed with achievement, they didn't care if they did well or not

Cognitive Revolution (1960s)

Cognitive Revolution (1960s) - conscious thoughts are causal Do conscious thoughts cause behavior? -Of course they do! -Downward social comparison, planning, difficult choices, reappraisal, problem solving, etc etc etc Conscious thought can change the meaning of external events: -Reappraisal -Rationalization -Emotional regulation

Communication with others; collaboration and coordination of activities; keeping on good terms with others in our group

Cooperation and Coordination: Internal conscious thought grew out of external talking and communicating with other people Tomasello: the motivation to share psychological states and the capacity to coordinate one's behavior with others are what differentiates us from all other animals... Hannah Arendt: "Two-in-one" of Consciousness -Story about socrates and another man he always argues with, but the other man is actually just himself -Conscious thought: two people talking inside your head Lev Vygotsky, Russian developmental psychologist (1930s): -Each of us as individuals, around 2½ or 3 years of age, first talk to ourselves out loud, and then silently thereafter Daniel Dennett: Origin of Consciousness -Early use of language: to communicate with others, to ask for help but also to listen and respond to others' requests for help. Hearing oneself then would come to activate one's own response to a help request -Hearing what you were saying to others shared the information across different modules and circuits Baars: Global Workspace -to spread information across various modules and circuits

Unconscious thought theory (Deliberation without attention effect)

Deliberation without attention effect: We can operate without our conscious awareness being there -Complex set of 4 options (of cars or houses) that vary on dimensions -Then some ps are allowed to think about which was their favorite for 4 minutes (conscious thought condition) -Other condition, ps told they'd be choosing fav car and then are distracted for 4 min (unconscious thought condition) -Results showed that people made better decisions in the unconscious thought decision (they were better able to handle complexity, process information in parallel) -Found that the same brain areas are active, even when the attention is distracted elsewhere -Marien et al 2012: six experiments showing that unconscious achievement and other motives operate using the same working memory structures and executive processes as in conscious goal pursuit -Noticing goal relevant information (reward) outside conscious awareness: We are not aware of the reward, but our attention is guiding our response so we are picking up the reward without awareness -Pessiglione & Frith (2007): Value and Effort: subliminal reward cues

Kurt Lewin: Signature qualities of motivational states

Dynamic features of goal pursuit: 1. Overcoming obstacles (perseverence) 2. Resuming interrupted tasks 1. Looking at persistence, when achievement primed, more than 2x more likely to continue 2. Looking at task resumption, when achievement primed, more likely to resume first task Another experiment: -Participants were asked to either find scrambled words or look at cartoons. Then there was a planned power failure. And ps were told they could do whatever task they wanted. People with the high achievement goal activated wanted to complete the scrambled word task even if it was boring

Changes in the self or Changes in the world

Eibach Libby & Gilovich 2001 -Having a baby makes you more alert to dangers (to them) out in the world (stairs, cleaning products under the sink) -So you believe that the world itself has become a more dangerous place -Ratings of neighborhood crime as increasing during child raising years, when in fact it decreased over same period

real-life triggers of unconscious goal pursuit: emotions

Haidt: "Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail" -"Disgusting" scenarios with all rational reasons for disgust removed -Reverses usual model: instead of moral reasoning producing the emotion, the emotion is experienced immediately and intuitively, and causes the reasoning (i.e., the reasoning tends to support the immediate emotional reaction) Haidt's "moral intuitionist" model: Evolved emotional reactions (with corresponding motives) -Fear: withdraw, seek safety -Anger: attack, change situation -Disgust: reject, repulse, avoid Lerner Small and Loewenstein study: -Had people in a first study → watched movie clips to create emotional states Either disgust or sadness -However, the emotion that you're in changes your evaluation of the products (changes what people offer to buy or sell) -Carry-over (priming) effects of recent emotional experience -Disgust = behavioral tendency to expel current objects and resist taking in anything new (so offered less/asked for less) -We don't want to buy new things and we want to get rid of things -Sadness = implicit goal to change one's circumstances (so offered more/asked for less) -Retail therapy: want to buy new things and sell old things (buy for more and sell for less) Soburn: -California Chrome race horse loss -Owner gets really upset and when his wife tries to calm him down, he turns around and yells at her, which was all caught on camera. -The next day he apologizes -When he was angry, he thought he needed to say these things immediately: "This needs sayin'!" -But when he's not angry anymore, he rethinks his decision -Anger (emotional state) made him reckless and overconfident

When should we trust our intuitions?

It depends... -Does present context match evolutionary conditions? (photograph vs video) -take intuitions seriously but not as the only basis for decision -Remove carry over effects by 'sleeping on it' -Who will your decision affect? Only yourself, or others?? (ex: police officer dilemma and beauty premium studies)

Field studies of unconscious goal pursuits

Latham: Goal setting theory (GST) Telemarketer study: -Put a photograph of a woman winning a marathon in a meeting for telemarketers -People who saw that picture → raised more money, but they didn't know that the picture had any effect on them at all Lost on the Moon Task: -You are crashed on the moon 100 miles from the rescue vehicle. You have to get back to the rock, what do you take with you? -If you talk about it as a group, you come up with a better answer -Also prime the idea of cooperation and people in this condition exhibit better teamwork and have better answers Email study: -Better customer service and higher rate of solving customer problems after CEO weekly email contained achievement and high performance primes, or desktop graphics that primed friendly customer service agent. Related study: Recipe fliers with healthy/diet primes reduce grocery store snack purchases by obese individuals by 75% (but only related to obese individuals because they already have a specific goal of losing weight)

Other practical pieces of advice

More practical advice: -Get going on goals early so they work on things while your conscious mind and purposes are on other matters -Routinize goal pursuit to avoid procrastination and failure to pursue important goals -Think about what higher motives, purposes, and goals are being served by your achievement and performance goals - keep those priorities and higher purposes in mind as much as you can Expectancy x Value -the value motivates you to continue -identity and purposes keep you motivated and keep you on track fulfillment of identity Lewin 1926: the old saying "What one intends, one forgets" -"If the intention is not based upon a real need, it has little chance of succeeding." -Tie your goals to a real need! -Use the psychological presences of other people to your advantage (do it for your parents, do it for your family, do it for the people you love and care about, do it to make them proud)

Basic Evolved Motives

Need to Belong Need for Control Need for Physical Safety Need for Physical Warmth Need to Cooperate

Passive Frame Theory

Passive Frame Theory: Unconscious 'calls for help' to conscious processes when it can't handle something on its own Plans and Mental Control -Nagging thoughts of the night Eric Klinger: unfulfilled or pressing goals -Make concrete plan for what to do about it -Turns off the nagging: unconscious goal pursuit wants a concrete plan of action -Fichten et al. 2001: intrusive thoughts of the night -can't easily control them or turn them off -Unconscious processes asking for help from conscious processes, working on these problems while we sleep, but can't solve them Masicampo and Baumeister (2011): -Had people focus on a task that is incomplete (have people focus and write about it) -Then read a mystery novel, but they are distracted by their intrusive thoughts -But in another condition: asked to make a plan how to complete these tasks, they did not have the intrusive thoughts -Study 4: told that later on they would have to list many sea creatures -But then they were distracted when reading -But if they were told a strategy for thinking of sea creatures (i.e., listing letters of alphabet and then a sea creature for each letter), they were not distracted anymore

How does the gut know the truth?

Schwarz & Newman 2017: Intuitions and gut reactions - "How does the gut know the truth?" 1. Fluency: -Show people the same recipe but sometimes it's an easy to read font and sometimes it's a difficult to read font -People think it is easier to make the recipe if the font is easier to read -In this case, they misattribute the fluency of the font with the fluency of the recipe -Fluency: an evolved adaptive cue that can be fooled by modern developments -Fluency is related to "truthiness" in the sense that if it takes a lot of thought to figure something out, we can't trust it as much! We misattribute the fluency of processing to liking or wanting something...it is "truthier" -stereotypes mislead us by automatically (fluently, effortlessly) providing information about an individual

Check your work: Shane Frederick - cognitive reflection test (CRT)

Shane Frederick - cognitive reflection test (CRT): -Did intuition test: If the bat and the ball cost $1.10 in total and the bat costs more than the bat by 1$, how much is the ball? -Our intuitions fail us because we don't stop and think about our answers -Even if you are smart (attend an ivy), you can still be wrong if you trust your intuitions

Shared Experiences

Shared experiences: -Erica Boothby et al. -Sharing an experience with someone we know makes it more intense and memorable -Viewing unusual, evocative, beautiful photos either alone or with another participant. (friend, new acquaintance or stranger) -The many scenes rated more intense and vivid if incidentally viewed at the same time a friend or acquaintance saw them -sharing experiences with others (friends, family) intensifies those experiences (liking sweeter chocolate more and disliked bad chocolates more) -Need to share self-concepts and changes in self concept: self disclosure, self verification theory, symbolic self-completion theory (a need to make internal changes a social reality) -Stigmatized Identities: Socially sanctioned or de-valued identities; kept hidden from others as much as possible -visible: overweight, deformity, disease -invisible: unpopular political views, deviant sexual identity, mental illness -People don't tell any of these social relationships about their problems, but then when the internet emerged, they could find people that shared the same interest as them -But this can sometimes backfire; self-completion may go badly (e.g. if you tell your spouse you are racist, they might leave you), but we have a need to share that is so strong that we will do it anyway

The 'selfish goal'

The 'selfish goal' (Huang & Bargh 2014) -Autonomy is a feature of all goal pursuits, conscious and unconscious alike -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 (or 'self'), staying active until completed, turning off when completed, all on their own

Consequences of unconscious motivations (the Bias Blind Spot)

The Bias Blind Spot (Emily Pronin): -We are not aware of our own motivations to evaluate evidence and reach certain desired conclusions and so believe we are objective: This means those who disagree with us are not being objective, and so must be motivated to hold their opinions (i.e., biased) -When we have disagreements with others, we believe we are being objective and fair, we are not conscious of our own motivations operating - thus if we are objective, and others disagree with us, they have to be biased in some way -This exacerbates group conflict and is a major stumbling block to successful negotiations and conflict resolution Fitzgerald 1993 Supreme Court sexual harassment cases: -concluded that 75% of perps genuinely did not realize they were doing anything wrong -some of these cases are so obvious and egregious it really seems that the person is unaware of what they are doing (it would have been relatively easy to not be caught)

Goal autonomy and goal staying on when you DO NOT want them on

The Troubling Thoughts of the Night: -people who reported having difficulty sleeping, over 80% had difficulty getting back to sleep after waking in the nighttime -This is a problem people can have their entire lives, on the average these people had trouble getting back to sleep for over 17 years - one person had the problem for 60 years. -The researchers found that by far, the most common type of thought that kept them awake, nearly 50% of them, was about the future, the short term events coming up in the next day or week. They were about what they needed to get done the following day, or in the next few days -Even the relatively positive thoughts of the night were about uncompleted tasks for the next day, such as getting a birthday present for a loved one. -In short, the main predictor of not getting back to sleep at night were negative, anxiety provoking thoughts about the near future, about things they had to get done, problems they needed to solve about their own personal current situation. -Namely - incompleted important goals -Ruminations: can't stop thinking about something even if you really want to stop (Susan Nolen-Hoeksema) -Ironic Processes (White Bear Study): paradoxical effects of attempted mental control! -Trying not to do something requires keeping in mind what you don't want to do, which keeps it accessible in your mind. Then, when distracted or under attentional load, it is more likely than usual to be thought, said, done...

Effective means of self-control: habits and plans

The best self control does not use "willpower": Galla & Duckworth 2014 -Those who score highly on self control scale did the beneficial behavior (e.g., exercise) "without having to consciously remember", it was "something I do automatically". -They were more likely than others to exercise at the same regular time and place every day - linking that place and time, the external cues, to their desired behavior. -And they made the behavior routine and habitual by being more likely to do it every day than less often, only occasionally. Other studies: -Extensive reviews of hundreds of self-control studies have also shown that effective control was linked to habits and routine behaviors more than it was linked to deliberate and effortful acts of control such as suppressing impulses. -And recent studies of people who are good at self-control have revealed they experience fewer temptations than the rest of us and less often need to control themselves at all. -But it wasn't just luck that they had fewer temptations, and it wasn't a lack of passion or craving or desires.. -Those who were the best at self-control had deliberately set up their environment - home and workplace - to minimize these temptations. Not buying the tempting desserts in the first place, so that they were not available there at home, same with alcohol or other desirable but unhealthy foods and activities. Wendy Wood - Habits -Most effective way to self regulate, accomplish goals -Delegate control to reliable environmental features -Getting home from work, changing clothes, immediately putting on exercise clothes -But - how to develop these good habits in the first place? (the problem of getting started) -> Implementation Intentions

Active goals 'on' to operate on all relevant objects and events, even those you don't intend them to and events, even those you don't intend them to operate on

Waiter and Reporter Study: -Job Interview: waiter or crime reporter (or old acquaintances, control condition) -Told to evaluate job candidate for the job -Many interruptions: "Mike" comes in to get interviewer to go to lunch (Mike is either very rude or very polite) -After watching tape, participant is unexpectedly asked their opinion of "Mike" the interrupter, how much they liked Mike -In the waiter condition, ps only liked polite Mike -In the crime reporter condition, ps like rude Mike more than polite Mike (still rated him as rude, but they liked him more)

Implicit motivation

Weinberger & McClelland 1990 -A distrust of self report measures of motivations and goals -Look to ways people implicitly express those motivations -How can some people achieve explicit goal and still not be happy? Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): implicit measures of needs -People are given drawings that tell the story of what is going on in certain situations -Can be coded in terms of themes/ goals that are put into the story -Person writing the story is projecting their own goals onto the characters in the picture -Coded different reactions to the images: Need for achievement, power, affiliations... -Implicit motivations: not necessarily aware of having these goals

The downside of the selfish goal and goal autonomy

What is good for the goal (temporarily active) may not be good for the individual in the long term, or reflect their long-term values