ABSTRACT
Research on the automaticity of higher mental processes (i.e., judgment, motivation, social behavior) has come a long way over the past 25 years. As Dijksterhuis, Chartrand, and Aarts (Chapter 2) note, had they been asked to contribute a chapter back then on the automaticity of social behavior, there would not have been much to write about. The rich detail provided in the seven chapters of the present volume attests to the fact that the situation has certainly changed. From a handful of relevant studies (see Bargh, 1984) - nearly all of them concerned with social perception and judgment - there are now hundreds of published experiments bearing not only on automatic influences on social perception (e.g., stereotyping, behavior categorization) but on evaluation, social behavior, and goal pursuit as well. Moreover, traditional domains of psychological research such as emotional expression and experience, and the formation and maintenance of close relationships, are beginning to apply concepts of automaticity and control to better understand their focal phenomena.
