Good Question….does the reality of unconscious processes undermine Christianity?

---

[ Final Draft: September 30, 2002 | Part Two: The biblical data ]

---

I received this intriguing question from Europe:

Regarding Consciousness, the Soul and the Freedom of Will / Responsibility:

While you mention "priming" in your text on the Soul, there is new evidence out on priming which casts serious doubt on the free choice. These data are mainly obtained by J.A. Bargh, Gollwitzer and other researchers.

Just an example: They (unconsciously) primes participants in studies to cognitive concepts of "hostility and rudeness" or "politeness" or none at all (control group). After that, they tested how these unconscious primes would affect behaviour - and indeed it did: 65% of those primed with "hostility" interrupted a conversation of two confederates as compared to ca 34% in the control group and 17% in the "politeness" primed group.

This is just one example of many studies on priming and the unconscious generation of ethical relevant behaviour. (Much of this research is on the web, so I won't bother with links since there would be to many - just look for "bargh and priming and automaticity" and you'll find enough stuff.

All in all, these finding show that the concept of responsibility is highly doubtful.

This is relevant because without freedom of will (i.e., freedom of conscious choice) there is no guilt. But responsibility is one of the main foundation of Christianity. Furthermore, these data suggest that intentionality can be triggered by mainly unconscious ways, which undermines the very concept. Intentionality and the ability to choose is one of the main reasons that it makes sense to deposit a soul. After all, if the soul does nothing else than being conscious, this raises the probability that the soul is indeed an emergent phenomenon, but has no causal powers in and of itself.

But the main problem is: no free will doesn't fit well with responsibility.

[The question points out that I made a reference to priming on my piece on the Existence of the Soul, and I have another brief discussion of automatic stereotyping in one installment of my Miracles series.]

Priming (and Cognition/Social Cognition generally) studies are--IMO--some of the most fascinating research topics today, and Bargh and Gollwitzer are some of the more enjoyable writers among the major researchers, in addition to being careful, innovative, and lucid researchers.

Our research in this piece will draw mainly from their writings (and those of their major co-authors, of course), with some additional information coming from other writers in the field.

As I understand the question above, it might be paraphrased something like this:

1. Ethically-relevant behavior (e.g., rudeness, politeness) can be triggered by the use of subconscious priming techniques.
   
   
2. The fact that this type of "intentional"-looking behavior can be triggered by unconscious (i.e., not by conscious choices of will) means, implies that the person is not 'free' to do otherwise.
   
   
3. The lack of free will over such ethically-relevant behavior undermines notions of moral responsibility, including those of Christianity.

Now, I think I will need to give a good bit of explanatory background on this for our wider reading audience, so I'll start with the phenomena of priming and automaticity, with most of this information drawn from Bargh/Gollwitzer/collaborators and those summarizing their works.

[I will cite the works in the general manner they are cited in the social science literature, with the full article information at the end of this article. Occasionally, in reproducing quotes from this material, I will remove internal citations [e.g. "(Miller & Johnson, 1999)'] and simply note with a "(-)" that the quote referenced some other document, not in my biblio. Readers interested in the next-level-out literature can go to the original source docs and find the contents of those omitted references. I left the (-) marker in, so the reader could know that a source could be found, should they desire further study.]

There are two initial concepts that we need to understand here: automatic processes (automaticity) and priming.

Automatic processes. A very simplified analogy of this would run something like this (my version):

Unconscious processes are like different battery-powered action figure toys. They have an on-off switch that is cut 'ON' by external stimuli in the perceptions of the human. They are dormant without an activating stimulus in the perceived environment, but once something flips the switch all the way to 'ON', they perform their 'standard routine' of behavior (e.g., fighting, singing, dancing, marching). These action figures perform their routines without the human's conscious awareness, conscious involvement, or even any conscious 'investment'. They run to completion--sometime varying their action, depending on circumstances (like a toy vehicle might back up and adjust its trajectory by 10% once it was stopped by some obstacle). They can interact with other activated toys, even in competition with them. They perform actions (e.g., moving an object, making a noise, flashing a light) that can also be performed by the human person in a conscious and deliberate manner.

As automatic unconscious, nonconscious, subconscious, and/or preconscious processes, they are somewhat similar to reflexes, habits, or instincts, although they can be much more complex than these.

These processes are studied under the term 'automaticity'.

Let's look at some of the descriptions of these processes:

• “Hasher and Zacks (1979) and Posner (1978) defined automatic processing as being effortless, unconscious, and involuntary. It is rarely the case however, for all three features to hold simultaneously (see Neumann, 1984; Carr, 1992, for reviews). Bargh (1989) pointed out that ballisticity (Logan and Cowan, 1984) – a feature of a process to run to completion once started, without the need of conscious monitoring – is common to all automatic processes, and proposed (Bargh, 1992) its adoption as the definition of automaticity.” (Tzelgov/1999)

• “The general notion of automaticity has attracted a great deal of interest, based on the widely shared belief that there are cognitive processes which (1) make no demands on cognitive capacity; (2) do not interfere with other ongoing cognitive activities (and vice-versa); and (3) are not subject to voluntary control (i.e., they are elicited by appropriate stimuli, and once initiated, run off to completion). [Kihlstrom/1999]

• "Over the past century of research, however, two distinct strains of not-conscious processing had been discovered and studied. These two separate programs of research have led today to two major types of automaticity: goal-dependent and pre-conscious." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.256f)

• "In addressing these issues, Bargh (1989) provided an elaborated analysis of automaticity, which illustrates that all automatic processing is conditional because it is dependent on a specific set of circumstances. Specifically, Bargh identified three classes of automaticity: "Preconscious" automatic processes occur prior to conscious awareness and only require the presence of a triggering stimulus to initiate them. "Postconscious" automaticity requires some type of conscious processing of relevant stimuli, but the outcome of this processing is unintended (e.g., nonconscious consequences of conscious thought and the effects of recent construct priming). "Goal dependent" automaticity requires intentional, goal-directed processing, the outcomes of which may or may not be intended (e.g., making trait inferences when one's goal is to memorize sentences containing behaviors; well-practiced procedures that one intentionally employs in social judgment or as part of a complex skilled action, such as driving or typing). In the stereotyping literature, the types of automaticity most often explored in experimental settings have been of the preconscious (-) and postconscious (-) varieties." (Devine and Monteith/1999, P.343f)

• “Mental representations designed to perform a certain function will perform that function once activated, regardless of where the activation comes from. The representation does not 'care' about the source of the activation; it is blind to it and has no 'memory' about it that might cause it to behave differently depending on the particular source. The activated mental representation is like a button being pushed; it can be pushed by one's finger intentionally (e.g., turning on the electric coffeemaker) or accidentally (e.g., by the cat on the countertop) or by a decision made in the past (e.g., by setting the automatic turn-on mechanism the night before). In whatever way the start button is pushed, the mechanism subsequently behaves in the same way.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• "What is the essence of automaticity that emerges from these historical and modern considerations? In all cases, the process is autonomous in that, once started, it runs by itself and does not need conscious guidance or monitoring. In all cases, the process is very fast and efficient in that it uses only minimal attentional capacity. It also appears that all automatic processes -- both in perceptual categorization and in skill acquisition -- develop out of frequent and consistent experience in an environmental domain." (Wegner and Bargh/1998, p.43)

Now this last quote introduces us to question of origin--where exactly do these automatic processes come from? How did the action figures get there and how did they get their specific behaviors?

They come from 'practice'--or at least 'frequent and consistent experience' (above).

We are not 'born' with these, but they develop from repeated experiences and perceptual associations, and in the case of habits and goals, from repeated conscious, volitional choices! Bargh and Barndollar (1996) actually call the unconscious "routinized consciousness" (p.460). Essentially, these little action figures are "mini-me" versions of a specific pattern of our behavior, volition, evaluations, motives, goals, and social cognitions. They are basically 'I-bots' who DO as we DID, and act like we acted, and "think" like we thought. In many ways, they are 'encapsulations of consistently exercised volition' (or of consistently perceived/noticed 'associations'--recognizing that personal goals affect what we attend to in our perceptual space).

Let's look at some of the statements, noticing words like 'chronic', 'goals', 'intentions', 'conscious', 'consistent experience', 'volition', 'effortful', 'choice', 'mental', 'strategic' to see this source-connection:

• "Automatic processes grow out of one's frequent and consistent experience, so that they represent the regularities of that experience." (Wegner and Bargh/1998, p.463)

• “How can the environment directly control much of anything if goals play such a mediatorial role?...The answer is as follows: if (and perhaps only if) the environment itself activates and puts the goal into motion.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “As discussed above, the development of most acquired forms of automaticity (i.e., skill acquisition) depends on the frequent and consistent pairing of internal responses with external results. Initially, conscious choice and guidance are needed to perform the desired behavior or to generate what one hopes are accurate and useful expectations about what is going to happen next in the situation. But to the extent the same expectations are generated, or the same behavior is enacted, or the same goal and plan are chosen in that situation, conscious choice drops out as it is not needed—it has become a superfluous step in the process.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “Just as automatic mechanical devices free us from having to attend to and intervene in order for the desired effect to occur, automatic mental processes free one's limited conscious attentional capacity from tasks in which they are no longer needed. Many writers have pointed out how impossible it would be to function effectively if conscious, controlled, and aware mental processing had to deal with every aspect of life...” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “This is shown by the fact that we often use it (intentional acquisition of automaticity) in a strategic fashion in order to develop a desired skill, such as driving a car or playing the violin. We purposefully engage in the considerable practice (frequent and consistent performances) required to sublimate many of the components of the skill. In this way, the conscious capacity that is freed up from not having to direct and coordinate the lower level components of the skill can be used instead to plot and direct higher-level strategy during the game or performance.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “But what we find most intriguing, in considering how mental processes recede from consciousness over time with repeated use, is that the process of automation itself is automatic.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “This is how goals and motives can eventually become automatically activated by situations.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “However, an individual's motivations are chronic and enduring over time. And thus, because of the stability over time of one's motivations, in many situations a given individual will frequently and consistently pursue the same goal. If the same goal is pursued within the same situation, then conscious choice eventually drops out of the selection of what goal to pursue—the situational features themselves directly put the goal into operation...According to the above analysis, people should be able to put goals into gear through external means and thereby 'bypass the will' entirely. The goal, once activated, should operate to produce the same effects as if it had been consciously chosen.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “Evaluations of objects or events come to be components of their perceptual representations and so become activated immediately in the course of perception of the object or event, without one consciously considering or intending to evaluate it.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “Other forms of automatic self-regulation develop out of repeated and consistent experience; they map onto the regularities of one's experience and take tasks over from conscious choice and guidance when that choice is not really being exercised. This is how goals and motives can come to operate nonconsciously in given situations...” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “And so, the evaluations we've made in the past are now made for us and predispose us to behave in consistent ways; the goals we have pursued in the past now become active and guide our behavior in pursuit of the goal in relevant situations; and our perceptions of the emotional and behavioral reactions of others makes us tend to respond in the same way, establishing bonds of rapport and liking in a natural and effortless way. Thus the 'automaticity of being' is far from the negative and maladaptive caricature drawn by humanistically oriented writers; rather, these processes are in our service and best interests—and in an intimate, knowing way at that. They are, if anything, 'mental butlers' who know our tendencies and preferences so well that they anticipate and take care of them for us, without having to be asked.” (Bargh and Chartrand/1999)

• “Kahneman's theory laid the foundation for current interest in automaticity: enduring dispositions are applied automatically, while momentary intentions are applied consciously.” [Kihlstrom/1999]

• “Bargh's model is one of 'social ignition', not 'social cognition': emotional and motivational processes are not cognitive constructs, but rather operate in parallel with, and independently of, cognitive processes; and most cognitive processing is preconscious. Consciousness is necessary only (1) as a preliminary stage to automatization; (2) for the execution of nonroutine behavior (of which there may not be very much); (3) for the correction of bad habits (which corrections then become automatized); and (4) for the inhibition of automatic behavior.” [Kihlstrom/1999]

• “It is our aim to establish that stereotype activation is controlled through intent, and that intent operates in a preconscious, resource-independent fashion. Consistent with Moskowitz and Sussman's (1999) demonstration that activated goals preconsciously direct selective attention and Wegner's (1994) belief that mental control (with practice) can be automated, we propose that volition, in the form of chronic egalitarian goals, leads to the passive and preconscious control of stereotype activation. Rather than conceiving of goals as operating through effort and cognitive control as equivalent with conscious forms of 'mental decontamination,' it is proposed that goals intervene at the level of construct activation to exert passive control.” (Moskowitz et al./1999)

• “According to Bargh (1990), goals become chronically accessible through their frequent and committed pursuit.” (Moskowitz et al./1999)

• “Rather, the goal would be activated when appropriate environmental features are encountered (Bargh and Gollwitzer, 1994), with the goal's activation being preconscious. Thus, goals are knowledge structures and like other knowledge structures, can be unconsciously activated (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Chai, & Barndollar, 1998); Chartrand & Bargh, 1996).” (Moskowitz et al./1999)

• “The focus of the present experiments was on a third way in which the goal-source issue has been addressed: the auto-motive hypothesis (Bargh, 1990; Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994). This model holds that although many of the goals an individual pursues are the result of conscious deliberation and choice, conscious choice is not necessary for goal activation and operation.” (Chartrand and Bargh/1996) [notice the difference between goal creation and goal activation.]

• “That is, with repeated and consistent choice (i.e., conscious activation) of a particular goal in a certain social situation over time, the representation of that goal may become directly and automatically linked in memory to the representation of that situation. As a result, situational features in the environment can automatically trigger goals chronically associated with those features. The auto-motive model further holds that the automatically activated goal, in turn, activates plans to achieve the goal and that these plans then operate interactively with the available goal-relevant information in the environment. According to the model, the entire sequence of goal activation and operation can occur without the individual's intention or awareness.” (Chartrand and Bargh/1996)

• “One possible answer to the question of where social information-processing goals come from is to posit that they can become automatically associated to representations of situations in which they have been chosen frequently in the past. Thus, one possible determinant of which goal will be pursued by an individual in a given social situation is the person's chronic history of goal choice in that type of situation.” (Chartrand and Bargh/1996)

• “The results therefore strongly support he auto-motive model's central postulate that intentions and goals can be automated and that their effects when operating nonconsciously are identical to their effects when they are operating consciously and deliberately.” (Chartrand and Bargh/1996)

• “What are the implications of the automatic activation of social information-processing goals? In other words, what are the advantages and disadvantages of having one's goals activated outside of one's awareness? To the extent that the unconscious is a repository of one's chronic goals and motivations (Bargh & Barndollar, 1996), it is the goals that have been used successfully in the past that become activated automatically, and these unintended goals are likely to be in the service of the individual. Thus the majority of the goals preconsciously activated will be helpful, and not harmful, to the individual. The auto-motive model considers the preconscious activation of chronic goals to be the delegation of one's frequent conscious choice to the subconscious, in the way that any skill can eventually operate without the need for conscious involvement.” (Chartrand and Bargh/1996)

• “This principle in the case of the present experiments leads to the interesting paradox that one's intentions can be activated unintentionally.” (Chartrand and Bargh/1996) [btw, there is nothing really 'paradoxical' about this…just a dramatic flair…]

• “However, implementation intentions also imply the selection of an effective goal-directed behavior. This mental act is assumed to lead to the automatization of the intended goal-directed behavior once the critical situation is encountered. Action initiation becomes swift, efficient, and does not require conscious intent (i.e., it acquires features of automaticity; Bargh, 1997).” (Gollwitzer/1999)

• “Gollwitzer (1993, 1996) summarized the functioning of implementation intentions by the metaphor of 'passing the control of one's behavior on to the environment' (1993, p.173). By forming implementation intentions, people can strategically switch from conscious and effortful control of their goal-directed behaviors (i.e., the effortful deliberations described above) to being automatically controlled by selected situational cues. For instance, people who have formed the goal intention to exercise regularly can furnish it with implementation intentions that specify when, where, and how they want to exercise. The implementation of their goal intention is thus placed under the direct control of situational cues and removed from conscious and effortful control.” (Gollwitzer/1999)

• “The strategic act of will implied in forming implementation intentions, however, is as effective in automatizing action initiation as the repeated and consistent practice implied in habits. Apparently, implementation intentions create instant habits.” (Gollwitzer/1999)

• "The auto-motive model posits that goals and motives can become automatically associated with mental representations of environmental features in the same way that perceptual representations do--through frequent and consistent coactivation (-). Perceptual categories (e.g., 'tree,' 'house,' 'human being,' 'hat') become strongly tied to their relevant environmental features, so that these categories are activated preconsciously in the presence of the features. By 'preconsciously' we mean that the categories are activated immediately and reflexively upon sensory pickup of those features in the environment, with no conscious intent or involvement necessary (-). So too are such more abstract social categories as racial and sex stereotypes (-) in the presence of the corresponding racial or gender features of an individual, and trait categories in the presence of relevant social behavior (-). Goals and motives must be represented mentally, just as are trait concepts are stereotypes (-), and so in principle, should be just as capable of developing these automatic preconscious links…Thus, if an individual frequently and consistently chooses the same goal within a given situation, that goal eventually will come to be activated by the features of that situation and will serve to guide behavior, without the individual's consciously intending, choosing, or even being aware of the operation of that goal within the situation." [Bargh and Barndollar/1996, p.463f]

• "But why should we consider the conscious purpose to be necessarily the "intentional" one, so that if behavior falls into the worn unconscious grooves, it is considered necessarily "counterintentional" or a "slip"? To our minds, the unconscious intention is just as "intentional" as--and, we would contend, perhaps even more "rational" than -- the momentary conscious goal. For one thing, the unconscious intention reflects the regularities and frequency of past choices. The unconscious intention is to conscious intention as base rates are to single individuating pieces of information in the domain of judgments and decisions (e.g., Nisbett & Ross, 1980). The unconscious intention, which represents the entire history of choices by that individual in that situation, is arguably more stable and rational than the conscious choice that is in conflict with it, especially given the limits and foibles to which spur-of-the-moment conscious choices are prone (Dawes, 1976; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Wilson & Schooler, 1991)." [Bargh and Barndollar/1996, p.465]

• "From research on social perception, we know as well that temporarily activated or "primed" trait constructs behave identically to chronically accessible trait constructs (Bargh, Bond, Lombardi, & Tota, 1986; Bargh, Lombarch, & Higgins, 1988). For example, Bargh et al. (1986) found exactly the same biased interpretation of shy or kind behaviors by randomly sampled subjects whose concepts of "shy" or "kind" had been primed as for subjects who possessed a chronically accessible concept of "shy" or "kind" (but who were not primed). Thus, as long as one has independent confirmation that people do possess the mental structure in chronic form, one can simulate the chronic, preconscious effect of the structure in subjects selected at random via the experimental technique of priming." [Bargh and Barndollar/1996, p.466]

• "In other words, these chronic motivations exist in chronic form as well as in temporarily primed form. And the same results are obtained with priming as are obtained with the chronic measure. This is important because, as stated earlier, priming as an experimental technique can demonstrate the role played by chronic motivational tendencies that are activated nonconsciously by features of relevant situations (i.e., situations in which those particular motivations have been frequently and consistently pursued in the past). It is thus critical to show, as the research described above has done, that what is being primed exists in the real world in chronic form." [Bargh and Barndollar/1996, p.468f]

• "This pointed to the importance of frequency for the development of automaticity [of perceptual skills]. Shriffrin and Schneider (1977) also showed the importance of consistency, in that automatic detection capabilities were only achieved when a stimulus was always a target or always a distractor; when the participants' response to the target varied, automatic responses did not develop." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.257)

• "In discussing willful control of action and thought, goals as related to issues of volition, and people as guided by selective interest, we are not suggesting that such control and selection must be conscious and effortful. Control can be passive--and this does not mean that people do not have volition, have not selected their goals, or are under the control of the environment (see also Fiske, 1989 Uleman, Newman, & Moskowitz, 1996). When goal pursuit is surrendered to an environmental triggering stimulus, this is not equivalent to saying the environment alone is determining responses. The environment is still interacting with goals simply in a passive way by routinizing the goals so that they operate efficiently and effortlessly (see Bargh, 1990; Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994). People are active, flexible constructors of social reality, but this construction and their contribution to it either can be under conscious control, or it can be passive-- exertions of the will need not be effortful and carried out only after other passive processes, such as inference or belief formation, have already been carried out (a position in contrast to arguments by Devine, 1989; Gilbert, Tafarodi, & Malone, 1993…)." (Gollwitzer and Moskowitz/1996, p.363)

• "But a further type of automated control of goal-directed actions is spelled out in Bargh' s (1990; Bargh & Barndollar, 1996) auto-motive theory. It is suggested that strong mental links develop between the cognitive representations of situations and the goals the individual chronically pursues within them. As a consequence of this repeated and consistent pairing in the past, these goals become automatically activated when the individual enters the relevant situation. The automatically- activated goal then guides behavior within the situation, without the individual choosing or intending the respective goal-directed line of action. There may have been a deliberate choice of the goal in the past, but this conscious choice is now bypassed. The situational cues directly guide the person's goal-directed actions...If, for example, a person has repeatedly and consistently chosen social gatherings (e.g., parties) to discuss his work problems, the contextual cues associated with parties will sooner or later directly trigger behaviors serving this goal. The goal then operates without the need for conscious attention or guidance and without the individual having a phenomenal experience of choosing that line of behavior. Data from recent experiments (Bargh & Barndollar, 1996; Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994) support the central hypotheses derived from auto-motive theory. Chronic goals can be directly activated by environmental cues, and these goals then guide behaviors without the individual's awareness." (Gollwitzer and Moskowitz/1996, p.374)

Consider this longer quote from Bargh/Barndollar:

"In all of the examples given above --playing tennis, driving a car, making social judgments, engaging in self-relevant thought-- the person intends to engage in the activity. Once that conscious act of will takes place, the goal operates interactively with environmental information without the need for conscious guidance; however, the act of will is necessary to start the process in motion. Therefore, one should not --and we certainly do not-- construe them as evidence for unconscious behavior (see Logan & Cowan, 1984).

"What these examples do show, however, is that the goals that an individual frequently and consistently pursues in a given situation are capable of operating autonomously and without the need for conscious guidance. What starts them in motion? It is the activation of the goal or intention - the "top node" in the goal system under which the substrategies and processes are subsumed.

"The 'auto-motive' model (Bargh, 1990) makes a fundamental prediction: that this goal or intention itself--this complex strategy of interacting with the world--can be activated or triggered by environmental stimuli. In other words, the environment can directly activate a goal, and this goal can then become operative and guide cognitive and behavioral processes within that environment, all without any need or role for conscious decision-making. Because there is no involvement of conscious processing at any point in the chain from the triggering environmental information to the enactment of goal-directed action, such phenomenon can accurately be described as "unconsciously motivated" behavior.

"Thus, what the auto-motive model adds to the already extant and well-accepted notion of autonomous, well-practiced skills or goals is that the initiating act of will itself can become delegated to the environment. Take again the example of driving (one we have gotten a lot of 'mileage' out of in the past). We have argued above that driving is a complex perceptual-motor skill, in which decisions as to how to move the wheel, how hard to push the accelerator, when to be ready to hit the brakes, and so on are guided nonconsciously (in the experienced driver) by environmental information. In other words, these behavioral decisions are activated by the information in the environment relevant to those decision processes. Now recall that those decisions, in the novice and less experienced driver, are at first made consciously. Therefore, with experience, decisions that used to have to be made consciously no longer are, and what makes those decisions if conscious processes do not? Those decisions as to what to do next--what subgoal to follow, in other words --are made directly on the basis of the environmental information present. The information itself triggers those goal-directed actions.

"Thus, in principle, there is no reason to believe that the goal "to drive," or, to take a more social example, "to be patient," cannot be removed from conscious control and delegated to the environment. This is the key hypothesis of the auto-motive model of unconscious motivations--that conscious intent or will can be bypassed, that the gap between environment and the autonomous goal can be bridged, making the entire process from start to finish nonconscious." [Bargh and Barndollar/1996, p. 462f] (notice, btw, that it is not the goal content which is being delegated to the environment, but rather only activation of a pre-existing, internalized, automated goal. We will discuss assumption of external goals under mimicry processes later.)

So, it looks like unconscious processes were originally conscious processes, and only became automatic once they were practiced enough--frequently and consistently in the same environmental setting--to become 'habit-like'. All my little 'action figures' have MY face on them, apparently. Environmental stimuli--which match the stored environmental representations of those experiences--activate these mini-habits or automatic-responses, which formerly were deliberately performed by conscious will.

[So far, this doesn't sound too much like something that refutes 'free will', in any traditional sense. If I intend to throw a right-arm block whenever someone throws a punch at me, and I practice this move sufficiently to where it becomes almost a reflex, then it would be very, very odd to call my use of this reflex in the future as something 'against my will', or 'unintentional'. It would be automatic and without conscious activation at the future incident, but 'stored will' is still 'will'…]

But bad habits can be learned also, and surprise me at 'awkward' moments, and addictions seem to be 'against my will' at some level…Let's continue describing the range of automatic processes, and then look more at how automatic processes relate to non-automatic, conscious control processes.

But first, let's get an overview of Priming research/usage…

Priming. Priming is the use of external stimuli (conscious or nonconscious) to either (a) temporarily turn 'ON' an automatic process; or (b) temporarily 'call up' a person's way of looking/perceiving an environmental scene. For example, one might 'prime' a research subject with images of the elderly, to 'call up' to their working 'view' of their perspectives, stereotypes, and associations about the elderly.

In the case of automatic processes, it is important to note that this kind of priming is not CREATING the automatic process, but simply activating it. There are a few limits to what can be primed, with a special (and obvious by now) limitation being that you cannot 'prime' an automatic process without it already being present in the test subject in some form. You cannot therefore 'create' a process by priming--only 'turn one on'. And, generally, the process calls up a person's pre-existing representations, instead of creating new ones.

· "The first use of the term 'priming' to refer to the temporary internal activation of response tendencies was by Karl Lashley in a 1951 article." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.255)

• "However, whereas priming research centers on the temporary activation of an individual's mental representations by the environment and the effect of this activation on various psychological phenomena, automaticity research focuses on more permanent, 'hard-wired' sources of activation -- that is, chronic accessibility of social knowledge structures." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.256)

• "Thus priming techniques can be used either to research the passive, unintended influences of the current and recent environmental context or to experimentally simulate automaticity effects." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.258)

· "What all three types of priming (conceptual, mindset, sequential) have in common is a concern with the unintended consequences of an environmental event on subsequent thoughts, feelings, and behavior. They address the residual effects of one's use of a representation in comprehending or acting on the world, which leaves the primed representation, or any other representation automatically associated with it, active for some time thereafter. During the time it remains active, it exerts a passive effect on the individual, one that he or she is not aware of and does not intend--and is therefore unlikely to control." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.259)

• "That is, it is possible to prime a behavioral tendency or prime a particular goal via the same manipulation (supraliminal or subliminal) originally employed to produce perceptual effects…as predicted from the theoretical position that there is a direct passive effect of perception on action." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.264f)

• "Motivations and goals can also be primed. Bargh and Gollwitzer (1994) reported several experiments in which achievement or affiliation motives were activated by having participants first perform a 'word search' task. Embedded in a matrix of letters were words synonymous with one or the other motivation. Those primed with achievement worked harder and found more words in subsequent word search tasks compared with participants primed with affiliation, who were more concerned with interacting with the confederate than with working on the task." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.265)

• "The purpose of the Chartrand and Bargh (1996) studies was to show that primed information-processing goals operated the same way as did consciously and intentionally activated goals." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.265)

• "Mindset priming is characterized better as a carry-over of an intentionally pursued goal or mental procedure to a new context. An act of conscious will on the part of the participant is required, unlike in conceptual priming." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p.265)

• "For instance, if the concept to be primed is too abstract or too procedural to prime with a single word in a scrambled sentence task or subliminal priming procedure, it might be more reasonable to use a carry-over priming task." (Bargh & Chartrand/2000, p. 265)

OK. So, what is/are the range and/or limitations of automaticity (and priming of such processes)?

Given that the bulk of our mental-minutia life would be automatic--since conscious activity is very, very consumptive of resources--how 'powerful' are these processes (including stereotype activation)? They 'run to completion', but does that guarantee that each activation produces a real-world behavior, or that automatic processes are always activated upon the presence of some element in the environment?

· "Results confirmed that the automaticity effect occurred for the participants' strongest but not weakest attitudes." (Wegner and Bargh/1998, p.468)

· "Lepore and Brown (1997) and Fazio et al. (1995) have shown that automatic stereotype activation does not occur for everyone, despite a stereotype's permeation of a culture. Although all individuals appear to possess knowledge of the stereotype, there may be individual differences in whether that stereotype is activated upon activation of the group representation." (Bargh/1999, p.376)

· "Stereotype activation may be controllable so that either (1) one's goals inhibit stereotype activation or (2) some other construct besides the stereotype may be activated instead, what Allport (1954, p. 20) called a more dominant category being activated (see also Macrae, Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995)...For example, Bargh and Pietromonaco (1982) primed the trait of hostility, but varied the prime frequency from 0% to 20% to 80% between subjects. Their data suggest that they only found the priming effect for the 80% condition; the category was not activated when only 20% of the stimuli were prime words. Showing that constructs are not always activated by the mere presence of the prime raises the possibility that the 'mere presence' of a stigmatized group member or of a stereotype -relevant trait does not inevitably lead to stereotype activation. Moreover, if people's goals to judge a certain stereotyped group in a fair manner can become chronically held, through recent and frequent application of the goal, there is reason to expect an automatic inhibition of stereotyped responses (see Bargh & Barndollar, 1995). In fact, Moskowitz et al. (1996) found that people who had internalized the goal of being egalitarian, so that it was chronically held, failed to have stereotypes activated. They demonstrated that while non-chronics had stereotypes activated by simply seeing pictures of members of stigmatized groups, people with chronic goals to be nonbiased inhibited stereotype activation." (Gollwitzer and Moskowitz/1996, p.388)

· "Before proceeding, we want to briefly discuss the role of the subconscious in action. By the "subconscious," we refer to that part of consciousness which is not at a given moment in focal awareness. At any given moment, very little (at most, only about seven disconnected objects) can be held in conscious, focal awareness. Everything else - all of one's prior knowledge and experiences -resides in the subconscious. However, there is a constant interplay between the conscious and the subconscious, with one's perceptions and conscious purposes automatically pulling up or drawing out relevant material…The operation of the subconscious is not directly volitional; it operates automatically, including in emotion. Emotions are the form in which one experiences one's automatized value judgments (-). The subconscious consists not only of stored knowledge and values, but also of acquired mental habits. Thus, people can take actions based on automatic mechanisms (knowledge, motives, values, emotions, habits) without conscious thought. One cannot achieve long-range goals by going solely on "automatic pilot," but one may make specific choices and respond to particular situations without consciously analyzing them. [Locke and Kristof, "Volitional Choices in the Goal Achievement Process", in Gollwitzer and Bargh, The Psychology of Action: Linking Cognition and Motivation to Behavior, Guilford:1996]

· "…subliminal registration of information is hardly the norm in day-to-day life (see Bargh, 1992) and results in only weak mental activations even then…" [Bargh and Barndollar/1996, p.461]

· “The idea of behavior as automatic and cued by perception was first described by James (1890), and recently investigated by Bargh, Chen & Burrows (1996) and Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg (in press). The latter found that priming subjects with a stereotype or trait considerably influenced subsequent complex behavior on a task related to the stereotype or trait. The present experiment is a replication of this, using the stereotypes professor and supermodel to prime intelligent and stupid behaviour respectively, with a manipulation to define the acting component of the stereotype influencing scores on a test of 20 general knowledge questions. The hypothesis was that performance on the general knowledge task would be influenced by the priming condition, but no significant effects were found (unrelated 1-way ANOVA, F=0.69, p=0.60, ns), leading us to question some of the conclusions arrived at by Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg (in press) regarding the relation between perception and behavior.” (Lovbakke et al./ n.d.)

· “This experiment failed to replicate the results found by Dijkstgerhuis & van Knippenberg (in press) as we found no significant differences between the priming conditions, confirming the null hypothesis: The primes did not affect scores on the test of general knowledge.” (Lovbakke et al./ n.d.)

· “In our daily lives, however, there is a massive onslaught of information, only very little of which has any behavioural significance, and the question arises: Why are only certain parts of a stereotype activated as behavioural responses?” (Lovbakke et al./ n.d.)

· “Recent work in social cognition suggests that all incoming information is automatically classified as good versus bad at a preconscious level. This automatic evaluation can lead to affective priming effects. Recently, Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond & Hymes (1996) have observed an affective priming effect using the naming task. In pronouncing target words, pronunciation latencies were shorter when the target was preceded by an evaluatively congruent rather than incongruent prime word...The present four experiments aimed at replicating the affective priming effect in the naming task. Pervasive evidence for affective processing of the prime words was found consistent with the hypothesis of automatic evaluation of perceived stimuli. None of the experiments including an exact replication revealed evidence for the affective priming effect, however, although much larger samples of participants (N=630) were used in the original studies...The results cast doubts on the generality and robustness of the effect.” (Klauer et al./1998)

· “Murphy & Zajonc (1993) have argued that the affect elicited by primes can be quickly neutralized by subsequent cognitive processing. There is also evidence that the decay of the activation of target-word nodes can be quite rapid.” (Klauer et al./1998)

· “None of the four experiments yielded an affective priming effect. These failures contrast sharply with the repeated successful demonstrations reported in three experiments by Bargh et. al. (1996), and they are more in line with the mixed results obtained by Hermans (1996).” (Klauer et al./1998)

· “Nevertheless, the data are consistent with the central tenet of Bargh et. al.'s (1996) theory of automatic, unconditional and in particular goal-independent attitude activation: there were effects of prime evaluation under conditions in which the intention to evaluate was not induced by the task itself. However, the consequences of the attitude activation appear to be less far-reaching, robust, and unconditional than suggested by the original Bargh et al. (1996) studies. In particular, the activated evaluations were not capable in the present studies of priming the naming of arbitrary other words of the same evaluation.” (Klauer et al./1998)

· “For example, the motivational pers