Being Open Minded Without Knowing Why: Evidence from Nonconscious Goal Pursuit

Abstract

Goal pursuit is a process that takes us from a certain state in the present towards a desired state in the future. Goal pursuits, then, are likely to require adaptation to changing circumstances and environments. The current paper reviews recent advances in the study of nonconscious goal pursuit. It argues that given the importance of adaptation, nonconscious goal pursuit ought to be much more flexible than previously thought. Two mechanisms that allow such flexibility are implicit learning and executive processes, and evidence for their involvement in nonconscious goal pursuit is reviewed. Two new studies that examine how nonconscious goal pursuit increases and decreases open mindedness, a form of flexibility, are described. Every parent to a young child must know how it feels when he tries to walk home from the car (or brush his teeth, or do shopping, or cook), yet the child simply won’t let him. First there is this smashed snail on the floor that the child must pick up and closely examine, then the climbable fence that simply has to be climbed, the neighbor’s dog, the neighbor himself, the autumn leafs and . . . and the list seems simply endless. In moments like this you often realize how goal directed is your behavior: You want to get home not in an hour, not in half an hour, and not even in ten minutes. The fact that your goal is not shared by your child—who introduces obstacle after an obstacle—makes the goal loom larger in consciousness: HOME. NOW. This fine-tuned awareness is less likely to occur on a childless day in which you quietly lock your car and silently stroll home. In other words, under the latter, more “normal” circumstances, goal pursuit is likely to be largely nonconscious. This paper reviews recent developments in the study of the mechanisms that underlie nonconscious goal pursuit, and it presents two new studies that examine them. We begin by describing the prevalent views, which hold that nonconscious goal pursuit is based on spreading of activation in pre-established networks of mental associations. We then argue that while using these networks may often be advantageous, it is also costly: They tie us to past experiences, and hence stand in