The proposed research focuses on several preconscious mental processes that have been found in recent research to occur immediately - without conscious intent, awareness, or guidance - in reaction to social objects, events, and situations. Recent research by several laboratories has demonstrated a variety of such processes that are put into operation immediately by features of social situations, and then operate despite not being consciously (intentionally) chosen, and without needing to be consciously guided to completion. Broadly speaking these effects can be classified as (1) an ongoing automatic evaluation of the environment, (2) an automatic effect of perception on behavior, and (3) automatic goal pursuits in which goals become active in situations to guide behavior without an intervening act of will. There are substantial theoretical implications of these findings of basic, environmentally-driven determinants of evaluation, motivation, and behavior, especially as concerns the necessity and role of conscious deliberative processes in judgment, goal- setting and pursuit, and social interaction. There are also implications for mental health in that these nonconscious causes of emotion and behavior are relatively opaque to introspection; in the case of nonconscious motivation one s behavior is guided and directed towards a goal not intentionally chosen in that given situation; thus one may not be aware of the overall pattern and effect of one s behavior in that situation.
Our aim i s to uncover the downstream consequences of these immediate automatic processes for subjective states and for interpersonal behavior, and to focus more precisely on the precise mechanisms and mediating processes that produce the observed effects. Several of the proposed studies make use of priming manipulations in order to activate a given interpersonal goal (e.g., competition) or perceptual representation (e.g., a stereotype) without the participant s knowledge; in several experiments this priming is subliminal in nature. The effects of this contextual priming of the person s emotion, judgments, goal pursuit and self-regulation, and interpersonal behavior are then assessed, as is their degree of awareness of the contextual influence.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH060767-04
Application #
6625435
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-RPHB-4 (01))
Program Officer
Oliveri, Mary Ellen
Project Start
1999-12-01
Project End
2004-11-30
Budget Start
2002-12-01
Budget End
2003-11-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$207,398
Indirect Cost
Name
New York University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041968306
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10012
Harris, Jennifer L; Pierce, Melissa; Bargh, John A (2014) Priming effect of antismoking PSAs on smoking behaviour: a pilot study. Tob Control 23:285-90
Huang, Julie Y; Bargh, John A (2014) The Selfish Goal: autonomously operating motivational structures as the proximate cause of human judgment and behavior. Behav Brain Sci 37:121-35
Gray, Jeremy R; Bargh, John A; Morsella, Ezequiel (2013) Neural correlates of the essence of conscious conflict: fMRI of sustaining incompatible intentions. Exp Brain Res 229:453-65
Huang, Julie Y; Ackerman, Joshua M; Bargh, John A (2013) Superman to the rescue: Simulating physical invulnerability attenuates exclusion-related interpersonal biases. J Exp Soc Psychol 49:349-354
Bargh, John A; Shalev, Idit (2012) The substitutability of physical and social warmth in daily life. Emotion 12:154-62
Kang, Yoona; Williams, Lawrence E; Clark, Margaret S et al. (2011) Physical temperature effects on trust behavior: the role of insula. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 6:507-15
Huang, Julie Y; Song, Hyunjin; Bargh, John A (2011) Smooth Trajectories Travel Farther into the Future: Perceptual Fluency Effects on Prediction of Trend Continuation. J Exp Soc Psychol 47:506-508
Ackerman, Joshua M; Nocera, Christopher C; Bargh, John A (2010) Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgments and decisions. Science 328:1712-5
Morsella, Ezequiel; Krieger, Stephen C; Bargh, John A (2010) Minimal neuroanatomy for a conscious brain: homing in on the networks constituting consciousness. Neural Netw 23:14-5
Hassin, Ran R; Bargh, John A; Zimerman, Shira (2009) Automatic and Flexible: The Case of Non-conscious Goal Pursuit. Soc Cogn 27:20-36

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