Henk Aarts

The silence of the library: environment, situational norm, and social behavior.

On the basis of the idea that situational norms are mentally represented as associations between environments and normative behavior, it was proposed that an environment can automatically direct normative behavior. More specifically, when situational norms are well-established (e.g., when entering the library, one should be silent), an environment is capable of automatically activating mental representations of normative behavior and the behavior itself. In these experiments, participants were exposed to pictures of environments, and effects on accessibility of representations of normative behavior and on actual behavior were assessed. Results indicated that representations of behavior and actual behavior itself are activated automatically when (a) goals to visit the environment are active and (b) strong associations between environment and normative behavior are established.

Goal Contagion: Perceiving Is for Pursuing

Six studies examined the goal contagion hypothesis, which claims that individuals may automatically adopt and pursue a goal that is implied by another persons behavior. Participants were briefly exposed to behavioral information implying a specific goal and were then given the opportunity to act on the goal in a different way and context. Studies 1-3 established the goal contagion phenomenon by showing that the behavioral consequences of goal contagion possess features of goal directedness: (a) They are affected by goal strength, (b) they have the quality of goal appropriateness, and (c) they are characterized by persistence. Studies 4-6 show that people do not automatically adopt goals when the observed goal pursuit is conducted in an unacceptable manner, because the goal will then be perceived as unattractive. The results are discussed in the context of recent research on automatic goal pursuits.

The Unconscious Will: How the Pursuit of Goals Operates Outside of Conscious Awareness

Blissful Ignorance? Although recent research has established the remarkable ways in which cognitive processing can occur without our being aware of it—for instance, casual exposure to retiree-related words, such as “elderly,” induces us to walk more slowly—behavior that is directed toward goals still seems to be the product of conscious thought. Custers and Aarts (p. 47) review a set of findings that point toward the possibility that goals may, in fact, also be vulnerable to manipulation via avenues of which we remain blissfully unaware. They place these results within a framework that reveals how thoroughly unconscious processes permeate our everyday activities. People often act in order to realize desired outcomes, or goals. Although behavioral science recognizes that people can skillfully pursue goals without consciously attending to their behavior once these goals are set, conscious will is considered to be the starting point of goal pursuit. Indeed, when we decide to work hard on a task, it feels as if that conscious decision is the first and foremost cause of our behavior. That is, we are likely to say, if asked, that the decision to act produced the actions themselves. Recent discoveries, however, challenge this causal status of conscious will. They demonstrate that under some conditions, actions are initiated even though we are unconscious of the goals to be attained or their motivating effect on our behavior. Here we analyze how goal pursuit can possibly operate unconsciously.

Goals, Attention, and (Un)Consciousness

In this article, literature from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and social cognition is integrated to discuss the relation between goals, attention, and consciousness. Goals are the tools with which people engage in volitional behavior. Whereas goal pursuit was traditionally assumed to be strongly related to consciousness, recent research and theorizing suggest that goals guide behavior through attention, and this guidance can occur outside of a persons awareness. The crucial explanatory role of goals and attention in behavior, as well as the relative unimportance of consciousness, is examined in the context of social cognition research on goal priming. Furthermore, three research domains are discussed that are relevant for the understanding of the implementation of volitional behavior: implicit learning, evaluative conditioning, and unconscious thought. It is concluded that these processes are goal dependent and that they need attention, but that they can generally proceed without awareness. Finally, when people are consciously aware of their behavior or their goals, the effects can be beneficial as well as detrimental.

On Wildebeests and Humans The Preferential Detection of Negative Stimuli

On the basis of a functional perspective, we hypothesized that negative stimuli are detected faster than positive stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants were subliminally presented with positive and negative words or with no words at all. After each presentation, participants were asked whether they had seen a word. They detected negative words more accurately than positive words. In Experiment 2, participants were subliminally presented with negative or positive words. After each presentation, they were asked whether the presented word was positive or negative. Negative words were correctly categorized more often than positive words. Experiment 3 showed that although participants correctly categorized negative words more often than positive words, they could not guess the meaning of the words better than would be expected by chance. The results are discussed against the background of recent findings on basic affective processes.

Smells Like Clean Spirit Nonconscious Effects of Scent on Cognition and Behavior

Three studies explored whether odor can influence peoples cognition and behavior without their being consciously aware of the influence. In two studies, we tested and confirmed that when participants were unobtrusively exposed to citrus-scented all-purpose cleaner, the mental accessibility of the behavior concept of cleaning was enhanced, as was indicated by faster identification of cleaning-related words in a lexical decision task and higher frequency of listing cleaning-related activities when describing expected behavior during the day. Finally, a third study established that the mere exposure to the scent of all-purpose cleaner caused participants to keep their direct environment more clean during an eating task. Awareness checks showed that participants were unaware of this influence. The present studies reveal the nonconscious influence that olfactory cues can have on thinking and doing.

The nonconscious cessation of goal pursuit: when goals and negative affect are coactivated.

Extending on the recent investigation into the implicit affective processes underlying motivation and decision making, 5 studies examined the role of negative affect in moderating goal priming effects. Specifically, experimental effects on measures that typify motivational qualities of goal systems, such as keeping a goal at a heightened level of mental accessibility and exerting effort to work for a goal and experiencing desire to attain the goal, showed that the motivation and resultant operation of social goals cease when these goals are primed in temporal proximity of negatively valenced information. These goal cessation effects resulting from the mere coactivation of a goal and negative affect are discussed against the background of present research on nonconscious goal pursuit and the role of accessibility and desirability in the regulation of automatic goal-directed behavior.

Preparing and Motivating Behavior Outside of Awareness

The mere activation of the idea of a behavioral act moves the human body without the person consciously deciding to take action. In an experiment, we showed that people subliminally primed with the concept of exertion were faster to squeeze a hand grip forcefully but expended more effort when the subliminal primes were directly accompanied by consciously visible positive stimuli. These findings demonstrate the human capacity to rely on mental processes in preparing and motivating behavior outside of awareness.

Why most dieters fail but some succeed: A goal conflict model of eating behavior

Theories of eating regulation often attribute overweight to a malfunction of homeostatic regulation of body weight. With the goal conflict model of eating, we present a new perspective that attributes the difficulty of chronic dieters (i.e., restrained eaters) in regulating their food intake to a conflict between 2 incompatible goals-namely, eating enjoyment and weight control. This model explains the findings of previous research and provides novel insights into the psychological mechanism responsible for both dietary failure and success. According to this model, although chronic dieters are motivated to pursue their weight control goal, they often fail in food-rich environments because they are surrounded by palatable food cues that strongly prime the goal of eating enjoyment. Due to the incompatibility of the eating enjoyment goal and the weight control goal, such increase in the activation of the eating enjoyment goal results in (a) an inhibition of the cognitive representation of the weight control goal and (b) preferential processing of palatable food stimuli. Both these processes interfere with the effective pursuit of the weight control goal and facilitate unhealthy eating. However, there is a minority of restrained eaters for whom, most likely due to past success in exerting self-control, tasty high-calorie food has become associated with weight control thoughts. For them, exposure to palatable food increases the accessibility of the weight control goal, enabling them to control their body weight in food-rich environments. Evidence for these proposed psychological mechanisms is provided, and implications for interventions are discussed.

Habit vs. intention in the prediction of future behaviour: The role of frequency, context stability and mental accessibility of past behaviour

This research examined the role of habit and intention in the prediction of future behaviour by analysing that past behaviour frequency moderates the intention-behaviour relationship to the extent that the context in which the behaviour was performed is stable. In two correlational studies, it was found that habit interacted with intention when context stability was taken into account and not when merely past behaviour frequency was considered: intentions guided future behaviour when habits were weak (low frequency or unstable context), while this was not the case when habits were strong (high frequency and stable context). A third exploratory study investigated and confirmed the idea that, if habitual goal-directed behaviour is directly activated by the context, mental accessibility of the behaviour (i.e. the ease of accessing the goal-directed behaviour in memory) moderates the intention-behaviour relation in a similar way. These findings are discussed against the background of current research on goal-directed habits and the cognitive processes underlying them.