ABSTRACT
In chapter 1, John Bargh forcefully, often compellingly, argues that—with all due respect to cognition and cognitive processes—it is the situational factors in the environment that account for, and automatically drive, many, most, or virtually all of the complex psychological phenomena of everyday life. The degree to which this hugely stimulating article is controversial hinges on which of those quantitative qualifiers (“many?” “most?” “all that are important?”) Bargh really has in mind, and that is what remains most provocative and unclear about the arguments he builds around the findings he surveys, particularly his own dazzling results. He casts his thesis within the classic tradition and the very definition of social psychology: The focus of the field is on the significance of the social situation in the determination of social cognition, feeling, and action, with the goal of demonstrating its remarkably strong and often subtle power.
