ABSTRACT
Even today, the strongest position in psychology advocating the supremacy of environments in determining behavior remains that of B. F. Skinner. Half a century after the cognitive revolution and a full rejection of Skinner's antimentalism, his bold optimism that human behavior is lawful and determined, that the sources of predictive power lie in the organism's environment, and that identifying them is the only certain path to a technology of behavior is ironically inspirational to a social psychologist working on fundamental questions regarding mental processes. John Bargh is a product of late 20th century social psychology, a field that passed its infancy with fortunate obliviousness of both the antimentalism of behaviorism and the inattention to environments that characterizes the inward-looking stance of modern cognitive psychology. From a historical point of view, it should occasion no surprise that a person born of this tradition need not be burdened by shame or conflict in using a dead, anticognitive philosophy's insistence on the power of environments while speaking with ease about the power of automatic mental processes.
