ABSTRACT
John Bargh's target chapter provides an excellent summary and overview of many lines of evidence for the importance of preconscious automaticity in social thought, feelings, and behavior. He correctly concludes that symbolic models of the sort that were traditionally applied in social psychology are inadequate to explain this evidence. However, other models may hold more potential. The main part of this chapter, following some discussion of definitional issues, outlines a type of theory that, I believe, can accommodate the evidence Bargh presents. This theoretical sketch rests on the properties of connectionist networks rather than the symbolic systems that have been the most familiar theories in social cognition. It is only a sketch, far from a well-developed theory. Yet, I hope it suggests potentially important considerations as social psychologists begin exploring the connectionist models that have been so influential in other areas of psychology in the last decade.
