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Subpage for draft of Automatic Activation article being created for Cognitive Psychology class requirement. Still in drafting/wikipedia formatting stage

Automatic Activation

Automatic Activation refers to implicit, or non consciously triggered activation of mental processes which can influence thoughts, goals and behaviors. Automatic Activation often occurs when priming or stimuli from the environment trigger a reaction later on that is in-line with the primed trait or construct. In a lab experiment setting, subliminal or supraliminal(above the threshold of a person's conscious) priming methods are typically used. Examples of these methods are word tasks or could involve flashing a picture on a screen too quickly for the human eye and brain to fully comprehend is there. A popularly used word task in past research was a Scrambled Sentence Test, created by Thomas Srull and Robert Wyer, Jr. in 1979, which will be explained later in the article. There have been multiple studies conducts on the priming and activation of personality trait constructs, stereotype constructs, goal constructs, and the use of positive and negative priming. This article will be discussing five research studies and their experiments that dealt with the automatic activation of trait, stereotype, and goal constructs.

A leading researcher in the field relating to automatic activation is John Bargh, Ph.D. Bargh is a social psychologist whose work focuses on automaticity and unconscious processing relating to social behavior. Bargh has also attempted to understand the notion of free will. In 1990, Bargh proposed the Auto-motive Model as a way to explain how self-regulation and goals work. The Auto-motive Model suggests that self-regulation can be triggered automatically by the environment holding two assumptions; that goals and intentions are represented in memory the same way that social attitudes, constructs, stereotypes and schemas, and that constructs and stereotypes are capable of being automatically activated by environmental stimuli, which goal representations should have the same ability. Currently, Dr. Bargh works at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of a blog called: The Natural Unconscious: Automaticity in cognition, motivation, and emotion. Recently, the blog returned from a few years hiatus, with a post from Bargh about why the researchers who claimed to have evidence for debunking his results from his paper, Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action, were wrong in their conclusions. This study will be discussed in Stereotype Activation section of this article with more detail.

Base Experiment

The base research study for all the research studies discussed in this article is The Role of Category Accessibility in the Interoperation of Information About Persons: Some Determinants and Implications by Thomas K. Srull and Robert Wyer, Jr. In this research paper the theory of personality trait constructs having an effect on encoding behavior into memory was tested. They conducted two experiments, Experiment 1 focused on investigating the priming concepts of hostility while Experiment 2 focused on priming for the trait of kindness. Each experiment was set up in the same manner; the only major difference between them was which trait was being primed. The priming task for each experiment was conducted through the use of a Scrambled Sentence Test; which asked participants to underline three out of four words in the line to form a sentence. Each sentence test would either form lines related to or unrelated to the trait the experiment was priming for. To fully test the effects of the primed trait, there were different versions of the priming task, which had varying amounts of lines, and different percentages of the priming trait. The hypothesis was the effect of the priming task would be greater if the total number of test items was large than small. After the participants were primed with either the trait of hostility or kindness, they were given a short narrative, which described an ambiguous acting person, and the participants were asked to later describe the persons’ behavior. The experimenters believed once the trait concept was primed at a higher level of occurrences, than the person would identify the ambiguous person’s behavior as being in line with their primed trait construct.

The results showed ratings of the target ambiguous person did increase with the number of hostility related items on the first task. The experimenters were also testing to see if the effect of the priming would decrease over time. Data from the experiment did support this hypothesis, as the time of delay between the first task and the second rating task increased, the average rating of the target person in line with the priming trait, decreased. The results also revealed a negative effect; when the delay was 24 hours and the initial priming task contained twenty percent of hostile related items, a less hostile rating of the ambiguous person was given than ratings given by subjects who received no priming at all.

The results of the second experiment did support the hypotheses being tested. The first hypothesis, in which the ratings of the target person would increase with the number of times the kindness concept was primed was supported in a similar manner to Experiment 1. The hypothesis of the priming effects decreased as the delay of time between tasks increased was again supported. The differences of the data between the two experiments was; the effect of the length of the first priming task and proportion of priming items didn’t have the same effect in time delay in the second experiment as in the first. The effect of the two priming variables after the 24-hour time delay was not as pronounced in the second experiment as it was the first. These results showed, when more favorable trait concepts were primed, they had less of an effect than the unfavorable primed trait concepts. Srull and Wyer felt after concluding what their data showed, it might have been worth to look at favorable behaviors which were less likely to activate the trait concepts, by using a broader sample of trait concepts.

Stereotype Activation

“In this article, the three authors, John Bargh, Mark Chen and Lara Burrows discuss their experiments in priming of both trait concepts and stereotypes. Conducted by Thomas Srull and Robert Wyer in 1979. Srull and Wyer (1979) created and performed Scrambled Sentence Tests, which consisted of numerous lines with five words, in which the participants needed to create a four word grammatically correct sentence from. Priming words that were sprinkled through the test would cause the participants to act on the behavior that was linked to the priming words. priming words that either could trigger rudeness or politeness or neither. rude words would interrupt the conversation sooner than those with the polite priming were instructed to go down the hall to the experimenter’s office to receive the next set of instructions. Were forced to wait to talk to the experimenter because there was another person talking to the experimenter. Results did support their hypothesis. Information that was gathered was “automatic activation of a trait concept results in trait-like behavior,” Experiments two and three dealt with two different stereotypes; elderly and African American. See if the participants would take on the stereotyped behavior of the elderly. Data showed that the participants primed with the elderly words walked slower down the hall than those who were not. Series of words related to a stereotype could influence their behavior unconsciously. T, the experimenters ran a second test, which used mood indicator tests to see what effect mood had on the participants. Elderly stereotype were not in a more depressed mood than the participants that were neutral to the elderly stereotype. African American stereotype, computer could subliminally flash a picture of either an African American male or Caucasian male face before the trials. Show an error message after the 130th trial which could have possibly caused the participants to start the task from the beginning again. Hypothesis of this experiment was that those primed with the African American face would have a more hostile reaction to the error message than those who did not. Supportive of this hypothesis. The activation of a trait construct or a stereotype in one context resulted in behavior consistent with it in a subsequent unrelated context” priming can unconsciously influence our behaviors and can produce those behaviors. stereotype’s features and can cause the stereotypical behavior to occur without the person’s awareness

Goal Activation and Pursuit

Goal activation and pursuit refers to when priming of a goal is unconsciously activated causing the person to pursue in behaviors that will achieve the primed goal. There have been studies done on the concept of goal priming and goal activation relating to many different fields. This article discusses studies relating to social- cognitive psychology’s research on goal priming. The first study discussed is a replication study of D. L. Hamilton, L. B. Kats and V. O. Leirer’s study in 1980 on memory and impression formation goals effects on behavior, the replicated study was done in 1996 by Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh. The second study discussed was performed in 2001 by John Bargh, Peter Gollwitzer, Annette Lee-Chai, Kimberly Barndollar and Roman Trötschel, which dealt with goal priming and goal operations done nonconsciously.

Automatic Activation of Impression Formation and Memorization Goals: Nonconscious Goal Priming Reproduces Effects of Explicit Task Instructions

In this research paper by Chartrand and Bargh, two known experiments were replicated which dealt with the different effects information-processing goal tasks had on identical behavior information, however the authors changed one detail in how to conduct the experiments. In the original experiments, explicit instructions were given; in the replication experiments, implicit, or implied instructions not out rightly stated were used. The hypothesis they were testing was the effects of goals on impression formation could be replicated when the cognitive goals were not consciously or explicitly given to the participants, but rather were primed nonconsciously.

In the first experiment, originally conducted by Hamilton, Kats and Leirer in 1980, participants either had the goal of memory or impression formation. The original experiment was constructed in a way so the participants were asked to either focus on remembering as much information from the sentences they read or to form impressions about the behaviors of the target person. After a filler task, the experimenters asked the participants to recall as many of the sentences as possible. The results showed the participants who had the goal to form an impression of the behavior recalled more of the sentences than those whose goal was to memorize. Before giving the original sentence task of the 1980 study, Chartrand and Bargh conducted a Scrambled Sentence Test designed to activate either the trait task to form impressions or the trait task to memorize. The participants were than given the same task created in 1980. The results of this experiment was supportive of the hypothesis, those primed with the impression formation task had higher scores on their scales than those who had the goal of memorization even though the goal tasks were primed nonconsciously.

In Experiment 2, the original study replicated was by Bargh and Thein in 1985. The objective of this experiment was to see if participants who had a primed trait construct for honesty would still form the correct impression when under attentional duress. In the replicated study by Chartrand and Bargh, the details changed in the method of the study were; all participants were presented the behavior descriptions under non-duress conditions so they all had good enough attention to process the information; no participant was given explicit instructions to form an impression of the target person, but rather half the participants were given subliminal instructions to form an impression. It was predicted only the participants who had been primed subliminally with the impression formation goal would show evidence for the in-line impression formation. The results of the replicated study showed the priming of the impression goal had the same effects on processing as the study in which explicit instructions were given.

What has remained for further testing by this study is what kinds of environmental features are associated with social information processing goals. It is already known that automatic activation of behavior traits is due to environmental features, but it is still unknown as to what features are related to the mental processes which cause the priming to be functional.

The Automated Will: Nonconscious Activation and Pursuit of Behavioral Goals

In a more recent research study by Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar and Trötschel, five experiments were conducted, which examined goal priming and goal operation done nonconsciously. The question tested in Experiment 1 was whether a goal to perform well could be activated without the participants’ awareness and operate to enhance their performance on an intellectual task. The method utilized was a word search, priming task each participant completed, before the second task of finding as many words as possible in three word searches in 10 minutes. The results showed a statistical significance for success of the experiment’s hypothesis. Those participants, who were unaware of being primed to perform well, did in fact perform better than those who were not primed.

In Experiment 2, the question asked was whether the goal to behave in a cooperative manner was conscious to the participant and if the goal was nonconsciously primed. The method utilized was a game set up which allowed the participant to either compete against or cooperate with their opponent in a fishing game. Before the participants could start the game, they were asked to fill out a Scrambled Sentence Test ,which either primed or did not prime the participants with the intended goal. There was also conscious priming during the fish game of a message stating it was important for them to cooperate in order to keep the pond stocked with enough fish. Those participants were also told to set the goal of cooperating as much as possible. The results of this experiment showed both consciously and nonconsciously aware participants had an increased performance for cooperation.

Experiment 3 was designed to rule out two different explanations for the resulting effects of the first two experiments; the effect was due to goal activation and was chosen consciously or the effect was nonconscious but was not goal driven. The experiment’s design tested the hypothesis; participants primed with the performance goal would find greater number of words in the task than nonprime participants even after a long delay. The priming task was the same as Experiment 1, but depending on whether the participant was randomly assigned to no delay or delay category, the way in which the three experimental tasks were presented was different. The three tasks were the priming task word search, a filler task, and then to read a paragraph and form an impression of the target person or do the same three word searches from Experiment 1(the third task depended on which task had been randomly assigned to the participant before testing). The results showed primed participants’ achievement related impression formations of the target person became less severe over time, whereas the participants who were primed and given the word searches had an increased performance over time.

Experiment 4 was conducted to test whether nonconsciously primed goals produced the same classic qualities of persistence and resumption as previously observed for consciously placed goals, meaning participants would persist and strive to complete the goal even with obstacles. The test was designed to make the participants form as many words as possible from a set of the same 8 letters and write them down on a sheet in two-minutes. The priming task from Experiment 1 and 3 was used before the participants were given the word formation task. The participants were video recorded to see if after the two-minute limit any of them would continue to work on the task. The results showed a statistically significant percent of participants in the primed goal than the neutrally primed participants continued to work on the task after the time limit had passed.

In Experiment 5, the hypothesis participants primed with the nonconscious goal to perform well would return their task after a long disruption occurred instead of switching to a more attractive task option was tested. The priming task was the same from Experiment 1, 3 and 4 and the task, which could be resumed after the disruption, was the same task from Experiment 4. The more appealing task to switch to was rating cartoons for humor content. The results of the experiment showed participants primed with the performance goal continued with the word formation task more than the non-primed participants. The results from all five experiments concluded behavior goals could be activated nonconsciously and then operate in the same manner as the consciously chosen goals. The question, which remains to be answered, is how the nonconsciously activated goals operate in complex and uncertain environments and still produce their outcomes.