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Cited by 536Social and Intergroup PsychologyNeural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesVisual Attention and Saliency Detection

Attention and automaticity in the processing of self-relevant information.

Bargh, John A.·1982·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
DOI 10.1037/0022-3514.43.3.425
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Abstract

A neglected aspect of the study of social cognition has been the way in which people select information for further processing from the vast amount available in social environments. A major contemporary model of attention holds that there are two separate types of processes that operate concurrently: a flexible but resource-limited control process that regulates the contents of conscious awareness, and a relatively inflexible automatic process that can attract attention to stimuli without conscious intent. Passive automatic processes, can either fa-cilitate or inhibit active attentional processing, necessitating either less or more attentional effort, depending on the characteristics of the information that is currently present. On a dichotic listening task in which subjects attended to or ignored self-relevant stimuli, it was found that self-relevant information required less attentional resources when presented to the attended channel, but more when presented to the rejected channel, relative to neutral words. This differential capacity allocation occurred despite subjects ' lack of awareness of the contents of the rejected channel. The results supported the existence and interaction of the two processes of attention in social information processing. of the principles of cognitive psy-chology have been successfully applied to the study of social perception. Until recently, however, most of this research has been con-cerned with the organization of already ac-quired social information in memory and its consequences for retrieval and judgmental processes (Fiske & Linville, 1980; Hastie, 1981). As a result, relatively little is known about the role of mental organizations of social information in the selection of infor-mation for possible encoding and storage This article is based on part of a doctoral dissertation in social psychology at the University of Michigan. I would like to express my gratitude to Hazel Markus, Stephen Kaplan, William Kunst-Wilson, and especially to Robert Zajonc for their guidance and support as my

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  • Limited-capacity attentional resources are involved in inhibiting responses to high-priority but task-irrelevant stimuli.

    “Our theoretical framework draws on prior research outlining the role of limited-capacity attentional resources in inhibiting responses to high-priority but task-irrelevant stimuli (Shallice 1972; Bargh 1982; Lavie et al. 2004; Clapp et al. 2009).”

    From Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017) · cites this paper as Bargh 1982

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Authors
Bargh, J. A.
Affiliations
New York University (US)
Corresponding author
Bargh, John A.
ORCID
Bargh, John A.
Venue
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
1982-09
Volume
43
Issue
3
Pages
425-436
ISSN
  • 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1315
DOI
10.1037/0022-3514.43.3.425
OpenAlex
W1976542268
Cited by
536
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 18
FWCI
42.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
Keywords
attention, automaticity, self-relevant information, social information processing, dichotic listening, attentional effort, control processes, resource allocation, selective attention, social perception

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