Unconscious Processes as Explanations of Behavior in Cognitive, Personality, and Social Psychology

Abstract

Recent research on the acquisition of cognitive dispositions indicates that the cognitive system is capable of unconsciously processing even nonsalient and "hidden" patterns of stimuli that, due to the limited controlled processing capabilities of the cognitive system, cannot be detected on the level of conscious cognition. The information about such unconsciously processed patterns of stimuli is stored in memory and it unconsciously influences subsequent cognitive processes. It is argued that to account for observable phenomena of social behavior and to explain the development of stable (personality) dispositions, research in personality and social psychology should focus on reconstructing the process of such unconscious earning and investigate the dynamics of the development of the unconscious algorithms of encoding social stimuli. Recent cognitive research on unconscious information processing is demonstrated to provide a conceptual framework for addressing issues of particular relevance to personality and social psychology.