The unbearable automaticity of being

“To say that moral reasoning is a conscious process means that the process is intentional, effortful, and controllable and that the reasoner is aware that it is going on (Bargh, 1994).”

“This is consistent with the recent movement in social psychology toward the demonstration of nonconscious goal activation and automaticity in everyday life (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand 1999).”

“…Wegner & Wheatley, 1999) and view much human social behaviour as driven by implicit attitudes (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995) and other unconscious mental processes (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Bargh, 1989; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Brandstätter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer, 2001; Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004).”

“The notion of efficient use of cognitive resources that are otherwise required for ongoing cognitive tasks has also been used to explain the automaticity of much of human behavior (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“In fact, it is now clear that automatic attitude activation occurs even in the absence of an explicit goal to make evaluative judgments (Bargh et al 1996, Bargh & Chartrand 1999).”

“The consequence of such processing is that concepts, labels, ideas, and judgments are often imposed, often automatically, on everything that is encountered (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“…explicit measures of attitude, such as those toward political candidates (e.g., Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003; Nosek, 2005; Nosek & Banaji, 2002), suggesting that they may also effectively predict other controllable behaviors (see also Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Haidt, 2001; Wegner & Bargh, 1998).”

“Bargh and his colleagues (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand , 1999; Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trotschel, 2001) also have shown that goal pursuit may be nonconscious and the " will " or actions taken to pursue these goals may be automated and outside of conscious control.”

“We assume that such channels are similar to the direct and automatic perception-behavior link that has been proposed to explain the central role of imitation in social interaction (Bargh & Chartrand 1999; Dijksterhuis & Bargh 2001).”

“In sum, there is a wealth of evidence that " people classify their experience as either good or bad and do so immediately, unintentionally, and without awareness that they are doing it " (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999, p. 474).”

“…people overestimate their own agency (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999) and that the majority of human behavior is governed by nonconscious mental processes (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) and mindless scripts (Ashforth & Fried, 1988), proactive behavior concerns a domain of behavior in which employees are…”

“Contrasting sharply with most classical views, this emphasis on the automatic or effortless facets of human cognition and action dominates current research on attitudes (see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Gollwitzer, 1999; Wegner & Wheatley, 1999).”

“As James (1890) argued, the superfluity of conscious choice in this sequence would cause it to drop out of the picture (more recently, see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999 ).”

“Similarly, participants exposed to words related to achievement goals showed a corresponding improvement in their performance on a subsequent anagram-solving task (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“…of present moment experience contrasts with much of our daily life experience, in which we often find ourselves unintentionally letting our minds wander (Killingsworth & Gilbert 2010), running on automatic pilot (Bargh & Chartrand 1999), or suppressing unwanted experiences (Kang et al. 2013).”

“individuals to learn from experience and reach perceptions of knowing without conscious attention (Hogarth, 2001), has been referred to as experiential (Epstein, 1990, 1994, 2002; Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996; Pacini & Epstein, 1999), automatic (Bargh, 1996; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999 ), tacit (Hogarth, 2001…”

“Important accounts of the relationship between perception and action have been proposed in recent years (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Neumann, Fbrster, & Strack, 2003).”

“Moreover, many of the appraisal processes are likely to occur implicitly (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“…room for discussion concerning the extent of nonconscious perception and processing of information, whether emotional or otherwise, the role of nonconscious perception in the automatization of higher order cognition and behavior is well established (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Bargh & Ferguson, 2000).”

“Generally, it is thought that repetitive activation of conscious ER strategies in response to particular stimuli may over time lead to that strategy being employed automatically and nonconsciously (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Jackson et al., 2003).”

“Therefore, moral reasoning is an important part of moral life, but for most people, most of the time, most of the action is in the quick, automatic, affective evaluations they make of people and events (see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986).”

“Much of normal human activity and cognition occurs automatically and out of awareness—as is necessary for efficient functioning (Bargh and Chartrand 1999).”

“Research across diverse disciplines attests to the ubiquity and utility of basic, valence-based evaluative processes in humans and, indeed, across phylogeny (for reviews see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Berntson, Boyson, & Cacioppo, 1993; Schneirla, 1959; Zajonc, 1998).”

“" In fact, recent theoretical discussions support our findings (see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“…almost exclusively from psychological theories of social identity and social categorization, in which it is assumed that categorizations of others based on demographic attributes result almost automatically in biases that favor in-group members over outgroup members (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“A number of other researchers have also suggested similar distinctions between automatic versus controlled psychological processes and behaviors (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Devine, 1989; Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988).”

“…skills (driving, basketball, reading), in which a person wants to automate the components of the skill to better perform it, goal pursuits can become automated through the same practice of that goal through frequently and consistently pursuing it in that situation (see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“More direct evidence for evaluation spontaneity comes from research showing that evaluations occur automatically on encountering objects and experiencing events ( Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Fazio, 1989; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986).”

“This estimate is considerably lower than prior speculations, which placed the percentage of behaviors in daily life that are performed in a nondeliberative, relatively thoughtless manner at around 95% (see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999 ).”

“In terms common to social psychology, the question is whether moral judgment is a controlled or an automatic process (Bargh, 1999).”

“Many decision researchers claim that this synoptic explanation is an incomplete description of real decision processes ( Bargh and Chartrand, 1999; Beach, 1993).”

“But predictably dissimilar correlations of social and political attitudes among people with greater and lesser shared genotypes suggest that behaviors are often shaped by forces of which the actors themselves are not consciously aware, a point that is made with some force by Bargh and Chartrand (1999), Marcus (2002),…”

“The human mind is intricately adept at making subconscious judgments (Bargh and Chartrand 1999) and parental perceptions of their youth’s attributes and competence influence their expectations, values, and ultimately their child’s behavior (Jacobs and Eccles 1992; Jacobs et al. 2005).”

“…long-term memory, edit the retrieved information for relevancy and selfprotection, and report in a format and style usually to appear sane and accurate to some degree; responses following these steps quite often have little relationship to reality (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Nesbitt & Wilson, 1977).”

“We have noted several times in this article that goals can be automatically activated by cues in the environment (for reviews, see Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Bargh & Ferguson, 2000).”

“Bargh and Chartrand (1999) note that although- automatic processes offer performers numerous advantages, including freeing up their limited cognitive and attentional capacities, people also have purposes and goals that require conscious effort.”

“Namely, one can engage in these executive-functioning and self-regulation tasks for only so long before one becomes depleted (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Baumeister et al., 1998; Baumeister et al., 2007) All of these studies support the hypothesis that the processes and resources required for…”

“Many psychologists contend that individuals perform the bulk of their actions on autopilot, as it were, making use of “automatic self-regulation” (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“Automaticity is the ability to effortlessly engage in behaviors without conscious oversight of their operational details and thus has adaptive benefits for information processing when, as is often the case, cognitive capacity is constrained (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“Clearly, much of self-regulation is framed in diurnal cycles, is automatic and unconscious in nature, and in this sense, is entrained (Bargh & Chartrand 1999, Bargh & Williams 2006, Fitzsimons & Bargh 2004).”

“…no mention was made of the evaluative content of the stimuli and when participants were not instructed to evaluate the stimuli in any way, prompting Bargh and Chartrand (1999) to conclude that automatic evaluation results in a behavioral predisposition toward or away from the stimulus " in a…”

“Unfortunately, thought suppression can actually increase the frequency of unwanted thoughts (Salkovskis & Campbell, 1994; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987) and reduce conscious control over simultaneously occurring overt behaviors (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“Many forms of mimicry meet central criteria for automatic processing (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Lieberman, 2000).”

“Viewing rhythmic synchrony as a process high in automaticity (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) implies that an ideal paradigm would involve incidental, potentially inadvertent, movement.”

“Others have shown how unconscious priming can shape subsequent action (e.g., Bargh and Chartrand, 1999), although it remains unclear if unconscious priming can lead to lasting behaviour change (see e.g., Macrae and Johnston, 1998).”

“In addition, recent research and theory have led some to conclude that the perception of personal will is essentially illusory (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Goll- The worldview-colored choice is next filtered through the individual’s persona and cognitive processes.”

“For instance, without self-control, a person would give in to temptation, quit when frustrated, disobey difficult instructions, or otherwise follow his or her automatic, overlearned patterns of behavior (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).”

“…& Zelazo [2007] for a similar perspective on apparent dissociations between two putative routes underpinning social cognition, as exemplified by, e.g., Bargh & Chartrand 1999); and concomitant differences in the degree to which brain areas are activated in the contemplation of different reasons.”

“When goal-directed behaviors are repeated consistently in a similar situation with positive reinforcement, they can become habitual (Bargh & Chartrand 1999).”

“One of the foundational principles of psychology is that people’s capacity to process and respond consciously to their social environments is limited (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Fiske & Taylor, 2008; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977).”

“Once developed, working models are thought to operate largely outside awareness (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) and to play an important role in shaping cognition, affect, and behavior in attachment-relevant contexts (Collins & Allard, 2001; Collins & Read, 1994).”