Chapter 20 - Social psychological approaches to consciousness

Summary

This chapter discusses how research related to issues of consciousness proceeded in social psychology. There has been a greater research focus on the non-conscious than the conscious aspects of any given phenomenon. Cognitive approaches to social psychology were greatly influenced by the 1970s' dual-process models. In social psychology, awareness of sources of influence on judgment and social behavior is an important research topic. Spontaneous attitude, trait-concept, and stereotype activation are three important ways in which people go beyond the information given such that semantic and affective information not actually present in the current environment becomes activated automatically in the course of perception to then exert an unseen influence on judgments and behavior. Action tendencies can be activated and put into motion without the need for the individual's conscious intervention. The most plausible guess regarding how non-conscious goal pursuit capabilities develop is that they develop out of frequent and consistent experience.