Automatic but conscious: That is how we act most of the time

The field of social cognition arguably represents the most influential marriage to date of any two disciplines in psychology. Although little more than 10 years old, this coupling provided us with a wealth of new constructs, paradigms, and perspectives with which to explore the underpinnings of social behavior. Nowhere has this marriage been more fruitful than in the distinction between automatic and controlled processing in social behavior. The construct of automaticity leant new understanding across a variety of domains—being powerfully applied to the exploration of stereotyping, attitudes, and attribution, to name but a few. In this volume, John Bargh presents a provocative argument that everyday social behavior is driven by automatic processes rather than controlled or conscious choices. He oudines three routes (perceptual, evaluative, and motivational) through which aspects of the environment can “automatically and nonconsciously produce social behavior”