The auto-motive idea
John Bargh proposed that goals are stored in memory and can become linked to the situations in which they are often pursued. If so, simply encountering those situations might activate the goal automatically. Experiments in this tradition exposed participants to words or images related to a goal, then measured whether they behaved in line with it.
Reported findings
A 2001 paper by Bargh and colleagues reported that participants primed with achievement-related words performed better on a later task and persisted longer, much as if they had been given an explicit goal. Other studies suggested that primed goals share features with conscious ones.
- They seem to strengthen over a delay until acted upon
- They seem to fade after being fulfilled
- People may persist despite obstacles
The replication problem
Social priming has become one of the most heavily disputed areas in psychology. Some prominent effects failed in independent replications, including Doyen and colleagues' attempt on a related behavioral priming study, and analyses point to small samples and selective reporting. Priming of goals has not been refuted across the board, but claims of large, reliable effects from subtle cues should be read skeptically. It is also hard to prove full unawareness, as post-experiment questioning is an imperfect test of what participants noticed.
Further reading
- Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., & Trötschel, R. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6).
- Custers, R., & Aarts, H. (2010). The unconscious will: How the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness. Science, 329(5987).
- Doyen, S., Klein, O., Pichon, C.-L., & Cleeremans, A. (2012). Behavioral priming: It's all in the mind, but whose mind? PLoS ONE, 7(1).