Automatism and Automaticity

Automatism and Automaticity Slide 1 1. Automatism & Automaticity: Slide 2 Historically 1. Automatism Historically Huxley (1874) tells us that “the doctrine that brute animals are mere machines or automata, devoid not only of reason, but of any kind of consciousness” was such an important part of Descartes’ work that “full acceptance of it became a sort of note of a thoroughgoing Cartesian” Huxley 1874: 7/20.. Although it is, naturally, quite a controversial doctrine, the basis for this somewhat startling view is Descartes’ very sensible observation of the “very remarkable circumstance that no movement can take place, either in the bodies of beasts, or even in our own, if these bodies have not in themselves all the organs and instruments by means of which the very same movements would be accomplished in a machine.” Huxley 1874: 7/20, my emphasis. Huxley suggests that this view is in fact so very sensible that there may be no way of refuting it positively. But this is not to say that he agrees with it: “The doctrine of continuity is too well established for it to be permissible to me to suppose that any complex natural phenomenon comes into existence suddenly, and without being preceded by simpler modifications; and very strong arguments would be needed to prove that such complex phenomena as those of consciousness, first make their appearance in man … we have a right to conclude … that the brutes … have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own” Huxley 1874: 14/20.. In other words, Huxley disagrees with Descartes’ views about ‘brutes’ being ‘unconscious machines’ – but, he says, “it does not follow that he was wrong in regarding them as automata” Huxley 1874: 14/20.. We can safely assume that “all the states of consciousness in brutes” are caused by “molecular changes in the brain” – and “[t]heir volition, if they have any, is an emotion indicative of physical changes, not a cause of such changes”. There is no reason to think this could work the other way round, i.e. that states of consciousness could cause “those molecular changes which give rise to muscular motion” Huxley 1874: 15/20.. But then Huxley ventures onto conceptual territory onto which Descartes (in his oppressive 17th-century intellectual environment) never dared venture: he takes this conclusion about ‘beasts’ and applies it to human beings. Slide 3 Quote from Huxley “It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism.” From this, he takes it to follow naturally that “our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism” – and that “[w]e are conscious automata” Huxley 1874: 16/20.. Slide 4 Quote from Huxley Today Researchers in ‘the earliest psychological laboratories’ “generally assumed that the mind was able to observe its own inner workings” Kihlstrom 1987:1445., but work “in the laboratory,” as well as in Freudian clinics, “quite quickly … suggested that mental life is not limited to conscious experience” Kihlstrom 1987:1445.. Today, “the proposition that many cognitive processes are carried out unconsciously is as widely accepted by experimental psychologists as the opposite proposition was by their predecessors less than 2 decades ago” Westen 1998, p6/71.. Bargh (2014) would even go so far as to say that we are in a constant battle “to try and overcome the automatic impulses and emotions that influence every aspect of our waking life” – which is to say, “to [try to] come to terms with our unconscious self”. Bargh 2014:33. Slide 5 Quote from Bargh & Ferguson According to Bargh & Ferguson (2000), social-cognition research has demonstrated that very complex and very abstract kinds of mental processes/social behavior can occur without ever [reaching? consciousness?]. Of course, the danger with this is that if we concede that all this complicated psychological and/or cognitive stuff can go on outside conscious awareness, then it is a small step to saying that all psychological and/or cognitive stuff might as well go on outside conscious awareness, and from there, to saying that conscious awareness/volition etc. is causally ineffective, and we are really conscious automata. Slide 6 II. Automaticity 2. Automaticity Even back in the day in 1975, Posner & Snyder were saying that “this question of how much conscious control we have over our judgments, decisions and behavior is one of the most basic and important questions of human existence” 1975, in Bargh & Chartrand, 1999:463.. But 25 years later, Bargh & Chartrand still admit that while “[t]he defining features of what we are referring to as a conscious process have remained consistent and stable for over 100 years, … there has been no consensus on the features of a single form of automatic process” Bargh & Chartrand, 1999:463.. (There is reasonably widespread agreement that the two major ‘strains’ of automatic processes are skill acquisition and perceptual encoding of the environment – but they are identified negatively, as not possessing the defining features of a conscious process, rather than as having anything positive in common.) Of course, in a fairly trivial sense, “a good deal of mental activity is unconscious in the strict sense of being inaccessible to phenomenal awareness under any circumstances” – since we are never aware, for example, “of the phonological and linguistic principles” which we are [unconsciously] applying every time we listen with comprehension to a speaker producing speech. In addition, quite complex kinds of behaviors are ‘unconscious’ in a sense when they are so well-practiced as to permit of being done ‘automatically’/unconsciously, i.e. consuming “little or no attentional resources” Kihlstrom 1987:1447.. Cognitive science teaches us that each individual has only a finite amount of attentional resources to devote to any [mental operation], so every time some mental activity is performed automatically, and attention is not needed for it, that much more attention is available for something more important. Slide 7 Quote from Dresp-Langley  back to: Slide 6 II. Automaticity Perception If we really wanted to be accurate, we could say that perception is the first kind of automatic mental process, because “perceptual activity is largely automatic and not under conscious or intentional control (the orange on the desk cannot be perceived as purple through an act of will)” Bargh & Chartrand 1999:465.. Not only can we say that the environment directly causes mental activity in the form of perceptions; but, additionally, perceptions (of the environment) can lead directly to thoughts/affects, without any input from conscious awareness. “In a classic demonstration of this effect, the current day’s weather affected how people being interviewed over the telephone rated how well their entire life had gone up to that point – they were more likely to characterize their whole existence as sunny when the weather was nice. Conscious awareness of this effect, moreover, brought about an immediate change. When the interviewers called attention to the weather outside, the feelings coloured by the presence of either sun or clouds no longer had an effect.” Bargh 2014:34. As we know, the advertising industry is incredibly skilful at targeting our unconscious biases or feeding us content in a sneaky subliminal way so that it gets into our minds, affecting our choices about which products to buy, without getting into our conscious awareness. However, even when they don’t contain sneaky subliminal content, ordinary straightforward advertisements can often influence people without their awareness. “In one new study examining regular television ads, participants watched a five-minute segment of a popular comedy show and were given a bowl of Goldfish crackers. The presence of any food ads during commercial breaks substantially increased consumption of the snack by participants. The food ads primed snacking absent any subliminal subterfuge,” Bargh 2014:35. i.e. just perceiving the images was enough to produce behaviour. Priming To illustrate a type of unconscious perception, I’m going to talk about ‘priming’, which is “an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences the response to another stimulus” Wikipedia. – even when the prime is presented too briefly for it to be consciously registered. Priming can influence “the ease with which certain ideas are brought to mind, and the manner in which objects and events are perceived and interpreted” Kihlstrom 1987:1448.. Early research on priming (in the 1970s) by Meyer & Schvaneveldt, which they named the ‘Lexical-Decision Task’, “showed that people were faster in deciding that a string of letters is a word when the word followed an associatively or semantically related word. For example, NURSE is recognized more quickly following DOCTOR than following BREAD.” Wikipedia. “To the extent that the prime affects responding to the target, this can only be because of an automatic connection between those two concepts, because the 250-ms time delay between their presentations is too short for an intended, conscious expectancy about the target to have developed” Bargh & Chartrand 1999:474..  skip a slide/forward to: Slide 8 Schvaneveldt & Meyer 1973 (i) In a second experiment/a variation on this format etc., they presented their subjects with three horizontal strings of letters simultaneously. The subjects had to say ‘yes’ if all three strings were actual words, and ‘no’ in all other cases. On the trials in which all three stimuli were actual words, the authors found that “[r]eaction time averaged 90 ± 17 msec faster for stimuli that included two associated words and one unassociated word … than for stimuli with three unassociated words.” Schvaneveldt & Meyer 1973:404. (ii) In those trials where at least one of the letter strings was a nonword (i.e. when the correct answer would be ‘no’), “[w]hen two words were displayed above a nonword, RT was 71 ± 23 msec faster if the two words were associated” Schvaneveldt & Meyer 1973:405.. (iii) On the other hand, there was no significant association effect if the nonword was either in the middle or bottom position. (iv) Finally, “[w]hen two nonwords were presented in the top and middle display positions, the mean RT was … [‘significantly’?] faster than when a single nonword appeared in the top position” Schvaneveldt & Meyer 1973:407.. Slide 9 Marcel 1983 – erroneous responses with semantic resemblance During some work on reading, Marcel, Katz & Smith (1974) performed ‘an experiment’[?] in which single words were briefly flashed on a screen, too briefly to be consciously perceived, immediately followed by a pattern, which stayed on the screen a bit longer/enough to be perceived. “A small but significant proportion of erroneous word responses, while showing little graphic or phonological relation to the stimulus, bore a striking semantic relationship to it. Thus green led to responses such as ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’, queen to ‘king,’ apple to ‘orange,’ light to ‘dark,’ happy to ‘joy,’ clock to ‘time,’ chair to ‘table.’” Marcel 1983:201. “Thus, unless it was purely by chance, the subjects appeared to be exhibiting some knowledge of the stimulus at a lexical or semantic level without being able to report any other characteristics of the word giving rise to such knowledge.” Marcel 1983:201. Slide 10 Quotes re ‘phenomenally bizarre’ Of course, a slight problem about all these kinds of studies is that “asking a subject to comment on or base a judgment on an inaccessible representation is phenomenally bizarre and may well induce the use of strategies which either disguise or eliminate the effects of that representation” Marcel 1983:212.. For this reason, it is usually better to test for (non-conscious) priming effect by seeing if the priming has an observable effect on [some related response?]. Slide 11 Stroop The ‘Stroop Task’ is a paradigm example of this approach. In it, subjects are shown coloured words on a screen, fitting into one of four categories: “(a) Color Congruent, where the word was the name of the color; (b) Color Incongruent, where the word was the name of one of the other colors; (c) Neutral, where the word was one of the noncolor words; (d) No Word, where the blank card was exposed.” Marcel 1983:213. Marcel reports that “while there was no difference between No Word and Neutral Words, Color-Congruent and Incongruent Words significantly facilitated and impeded reaction time.” In social psychology, priming studies have been able to shed some light on the way in which people immediately/automatically/unconsciously judge their experiences as ‘good [overall]’ or ‘bad [overall]’. [ Bargh & Chartrand 1999:474.] In “one of the best-known” of these studies, voters had to judge whether political candidates were fit to hold public office based on just a fleeting glimpse of a picture of his/her face. “Remarkably, the straw poll served as an accurate proxy for the later choices of actual voters … Competency ratings based on seeing the candidates’ faces for less time than it takes to blink an eye predicted the outcome of two out of three elections.” Bargh 2014:32. [In other words, first impressions really do count?] A somewhat similar effect is shown by work in the ‘embodied cognition’ paradigm: “Study participants held pencils in either their teeth – activating the smile muscles – or their lips – flexing frown muscles. The physical positioning of the facial muscles produced the corresponding psychological state.” Bargh 2014:36. Obviously this is just a very quick sketch of a few of the quite complicated functions that we can do outside awareness, but hopefully it gives you a bit of an idea. Automaticity and Cognitive Capacity Now, I said that each individual has only a finite amount of (conscious) processing capacity available at any time, and that every time processing can occur outside consciousness [/working memory etc.?], it means that much more attention is available for something more important. I would like to end off with some work by Baumeister, Tice and some others (1998) which demonstrated “just how limited conscious self-regulatory capacities are” Bargh & Chartrand 1999:464.. Slide 12 Automaticity and Cognitive Capacity In the experiments, participants were first required to exercise their self-control by not eating the chocolate chip cookies on the desk in front of them. Then they were required to complete a verbal task, which was, as far as they were aware, a completely separate test. But, as you can see from the table, exerting this tiny bit of discipline over the cookies affected whatever task they did next, even though there was absolutely no connection between the content of the tasks. They interpreted these results as showing that “even minor acts of self-control, such as making a simple choice”, deplete our already-limited self-regulatory resources; and that therefore “such conscious acts of self-regulation can occur only rarely in the course of one’s day” Bargh & Chartrand 1999:464.. You might think that this is a bit ironic, [them finding that conscious self-regulation plays such a small part in our [mental life/cognitive something???]], since the whole point of their paper/their experiments etc. was to demonstrate the significance of conscious processes – but you could also take it as showing how valuable conscious self-regulation is. It is such a precious resource that it must be carefully saved for those situations in which it is really needed, in which unconscious processes can’t do the work. Slide 13 Bargh & Chartrand 1999 Slide 14 Whitehead 1911 in Bargh & Chartrand 1999 Freud said that “To most people who have had a philosophical education the idea of anything mental which is not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and refutable simply by logic” Freud, 1923, p. 10. – in my thesis I’m going to be talking about Freud a lot, because, as many of you will know by now, that guy is my hero – but for now, I hope that in this paper/using ‘cognitive’ arguments etc. I have shown that there really is plenty of valid ‘mental’ stuff which is not conscious at all. Admitting that we can perform all sorts of complex cognitive/psychological functions unconsciously does not, and doesn’t even threaten to, show that we are conscious machines. Slide 15 That’s all, folks!  References Bargh, J.A., 2014, ‘Our Unconscious Mind’, Scientific American, 310, 30-37. Bargh, J.A. & Chartrand, T.L., 1999, ‘The Unbearable Automaticity of Being’, American Psychologist, 34(7), 462-479. Bargh, J.A. & Ferguson, M.J., 2000, ‘Beyond Behaviorism: On the Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes’, Psychological Bulletin 126(6), 925-945. Huxley, T.H., 1874, ‘On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and Its History’, Fortnightly Review, 16.95 (1874): 555-580. Kihlstrom, J.F., 1987, ‘The cognitive unconscious’, Science, 237, 1445–1452. Schvaneveldt, R. W. & Meyer, D. E., 1973, ‘Retrieval and Comparison Processes in Semantic Memory’, in S. Kornblum, Ed., Attention and Performance IV, Academic Press, New York. Westen, D., 1998, ‘The Scientific Legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a Psychodynamically Informed Psychological Science’, Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333-371. Wikipedia