AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSING: TWO BASIC MODELS OF SOCIAL THOUGHT

 The distinction between automatic and controlled processing has been well-established. According to this idea, social thoughts are processed in two distinct ways: 


(a) Automatic Processing, and 


(b) Controlled Processing. 


Controlled Processing refers to the processing of social information in careful, systematic, logical, rational, and effortful way. In this kind of processing, individuals think systematically and logically to reach to a conclusion. E.g., when you want to make a travel plan for your holidays, you find out most of the information, carefully choose the destinations and then systematically make the travel plans. Automatic Processing refers to fast, relatively effortless, and intuitive kind of processing of social information. This not necessarily means that these processing are entirely independent of each other. Some studies have shown that they work together. Automatic Processing refers to fast, relatively effortless, intuitive, automatic and non-conscious processing of information due to sufficient experience of the cognitive task or social information. Good amount of correlational as well as experimental research has supported this distinction. In addition, neurological research has also indicated the support to this distinction. It was found that there are two kinds of neural systems that process social information; one for automatic and the other for controlled. The automatic processing of thought is primarily associated with amygdala, whereas controlled processing primarily occurs in prefrontal cortex. Now, we shall discuss the effect of automatic processing on automatic social behavior. 


Automatic Processing and Automatic Social Behavior : 


We have already learned about the schemas. In order to demonstrate the effect of automatic processing on automatic social behavior, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) conducted some experiments. In one of the experiments, they wanted to find the impact of rude and polite schema on subject’s behavior. These schemas were activated by giving scrambled sentences containing words relevant schema. There were three groups of subjects. The group one had received scrambled sentences containing words related to rudeness, group two received words related to politeness and group three received unrelated words. After this task, they were suppose to report to the experimenter and ask for the next task. The experimenter was talking to another person (confederate). Experimenter ignored the subjects. Whether subject interrupted this conversation or not was the dependent variable. It was found that group 1 subjects interrupted the conversation more than anybody, confirming the hypothesis that the behavior has occurred in automatic manner. Further, it was found that it had no relation with subject’s ratings of experimenter’s politeness. In another study, they found that when the schema for ‘old age’ is activated, the subjects walked slowly than when it was not activated. Obviously confirming that the stereotypes, which are one type of schemas, have an impact on automatic behavior. In other studies, they have found that automatic processing have general effects than specific ones. They concluded that once automatic processing is activated, people automatically get ready for the interactions with the people for whom the schema is activated. 


Benefits of Automatic Processing : 


It is well known that the automatic processing is comparatively effortless, fast and efficient. In addition, whether it is beneficial than the systematic controlled processing is an interesting question to answer. Dyksterhouses and van Olden (2006) conducted an experiment showing the benefits of automatic processing. They investigated effects of immediate, conscious (controlled, systematic), and unconscious (uncontrolled, automatic) processing on satisfaction with the decision. They had three groups of subjects. The looked at posters and indicated their liking. Group 1 (immediate condition) has seen all the posters simultaneously and had to make decision immediately. Group 2 (Conscious condition) saw each poster for 90 seconds, listed their thoughts and evaluation systematically. Group 3 (Unconscious condition) worked on anagram problem after seeing the pictures, giving them no time to think. Later on they indicated their preferences. Subjects were gifted the posters of their choice. After five week, they were asked about their satisfaction with the poster and the money that they would want to sell it off. The figure 1 below clearly shows the 27 results obtained by these researchers. These finding clearly indicate that the group that processed the information systematically was most dissatisfied group whereas the one that processed information automatically was most satisfied group. This may be due to the different capacity of the two processing style to process the information, automatic superseding. This and similar studies indicates that automatic processing is not only effortless but can be useful too.

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