Unconscious Influences Research Articles

Unconscious influences revealed: Attention, awareness, and control.

Unconscious influences revealed: Attention, awareness, and control.

A process dissociation framework: Separating automatic from intentional uses of memory

This paper begins by considering problems that have plagued investigations of automatic or unconscious influences of perception and memory. A process dissociation procedure that provides an escape from those problems is introduced. The process dissociation procedure separates the contributions of different types of processes to performance of a task, rather than equating processes with tasks. Using that procedure, I provide new evidence in favor of a two-factor theory of recognition memory; one factor relies on automatic processes and the other relies on intentional processes. Recollection (an intentional use of memory) is hampered when attention is divided, rather than full, at the time of test. In contrast, the use of familiarity as a basis for recognition memory judgments (an automatic use of memory) is shown to be invariant across full versus divided attention, manipulated at test. Process dissociation procedures provide a general framework for separating automatic from intentional forms of processing in a variety of domains; including perception, memory, and thought.

Repression and dissociation: implications for personality theory, psychopathology, and health

Foreword Mardi J. Horowitz Preface Jerome L. Singer Acknowledgments 1: Repression, Reconstruction, and Defense: History and Integration of the Psychoanalytic and Experimental Frameworks Matthew Hugh Erdelyi 2: Defense in Psychoanalytic Theory: Computation or Fantasy? Marshall Edelson 3: A Classification Theory of Defense Mardi J. Horowitz, Henry C. Markman, Charles H. Stinson, Bram Fridhandler, Jess H. Ghannam. 4: The Evidence for Repression: An Examination of Sixty Years of Research David S. Holmes 5: Subliminal Perception and Repression Howard Shevrin 6: Hypnosis, Dissociation, and Trauma: Hidden and Overt Observers David Spiegel 7: Unconscious Influences and Hypnosis Kenneth S. Bowers 8: Repression, Dissociation, and Hypnosis John F. Kihlstrom, Irene P. Hoyt. 9: Awareness, the Unconscious, and Repression: An Experimental Psychologist's Perspective Gordon H. Bower 10: Shame, Repression, Field Dependence, and Psychopathology Helen Block Lewis 11: Repression in College Men Followed for Half a Century George E. Vaillant 12: Repressive Style and Relationship Patterns - Three Samples Inspected Lester Luborsky, Paul Crits-Christoph, Keith J. Alexander. 13: Interpersonal Relatedness and Self-Definition: Two Personality Configurations and Their Implications for Psychopathology and Psychotherapy Sidney J. Blatt 14: The Construct Validity of the Repressive Coping Style Daniel A. Weinberger 15: Repression and the Inaccessibility of Emotional Memories Penelope J. Davis 16: Psychobiology of Repression and Health: A Systems Approach Gary E. Schwartz 17: Repressive Personality Style: Theoretical and Methodological Implications for Health and Pathology George A. Bonanno, Jerome L. Singer. 18: Summary: Beyond Repression and the Defenses Jerome L. Singer, Julie B. Sincoff. Index

Male Masochism and the Colonialist Impulse: Mary Webb's Return of the Native Tess

Although the literary canon has become not only a site of conflict but a passionately contested concept and gynocriticsI has won considerable respect for the recovery of forgotten women's texts, books by previously popular and recently rediscovered women writers continue to go rapidly out of print. If for no other reason than their usefulness in providing contextualization, such books should be of interest to theorists of culture and language and to feminist critics of all sorts. Why, then, are these books disappearing almost as soon as they reappear? A line of argument that has been pursued by many feminist critics is that the structure of the academy and the training of English professors exert an often unconscious influence on our judgments so that we apply without question heavily biased received standards of greatness or even goodness.2 In other words, our rational processes are colonized by the dominant discourse. However, our rejection of certain books as inferior and unworthy of serious attention can as easily proceed from unexamined feminist standards. Books that have enjoyed popular success often did so because they offered sensationalism derived from a strong mixture of sex and violence, while avoiding outraging their public by at least overtly upholding the most prevalent contemporary ideology. For obvious reasons, such books are unlikely to be a source of immediate delight to feminist readers, perhaps especially when their authors are women. Yet, though feminism and institutionalized misogyny are in unlikely alliance against them, these books often deserve careful attention in context-rather than as part of the project of contextualizing classics-because, reilluminated in this way, they shine with a surprising power of their own. Mary Webb's Gone To Earth, the novel I will concentrate on in this essay, is a case in point. Just when the predicament of Hazel Woodus, the heroine of Gone to Earth, seems to allow for no resolution, Webb ends the novel by dropping her into a hole. By what might be considered a sort of poetic justice, Webb, as author, has been in danger of suffering the same treatment from readers for some time now. Despite the seductively beautiful paperback editions of her books published in the late 1970s and early 80s, Webb remains unfamiliar even to most professional readers. The current lack of interest in her work is understandable be-

Reinstating study context produces unconscious influences of memory

Having read a word does more to benefit its later perceptual identification when many, rather than few, of the words in the test list have been previously read. Some have suggested that this proportion overlap effect is produced by an intentional use of recognition memory or recall in the perceptual identification task. Contrary to this account, we found that words that are easily recognized (words generated from an anagram at study) do not gain more from increasing overlap than do words that are poorly recognized (words read at study). These findings are problematic for claims that word perception relies on a module, such as a logogen system, that is separate from the rest of memory.

Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past.

Nonfamous names presented once in an experiment are mistakenly judged as famous 24 hr later. On an immediate test, no such false fame occurs. This phenomenon parallels the sleeper effect found in studies of persuasion. People may escape the unconscious effects of misleading information by recollecting its source, raising the criterion level of familiarity required for judgments of fame, or by changing from familiarity to a more analytic basis for judgment. These strategies place constraints on the likelihood of sleeper effects. We discuss these results as the unconscious use of the past as a tool vs its conscious use as an object of reflection. Conscious recollection of the source of information does not always occur spontaneously when information is used as a tool in judgment. Rather, conscious recollection is a separate act.

Becoming famous without being recognized: Unconscious influences of memory produced by dividing attention.

The familiarity of names produced by their prior presentation can be misinterprete d as fame. We used this false fame effect to separately study the effects of divided attention on familiarity versus conscious recollection. In a first experiment, famous and nonfamous names were presented to be read under conditions of full vs. divided attention. Divided attention greatly reduced later recognition memory performance but had no effect on gains in familiarity as measured by fame judgments. In later experiments, we placed recognition memory and familiarity in opposition by presenting only nonfamous names to be read in the first phase. Recognizing a name as earlier read on the later fame test allowed Ss to be certain that it was nonfamous. Divided attention at study or during the fame test reduced list recognition performance but had no effect on familiarity. We conclude that conscious recollection is an attention-demanding act that is separate from assessing familiarity. Folk wisdom suggests that we benefit from experience by consciously remembering those experiences and applying the knowledge gained from them to the current situation. In contrast, research shows that many effects of prior experience on later performance can occur independently of the ability to consciously recollect the experience (see Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988, for a review). In this article, we provide further evidence that the past can be used to influence present performance without the intervention of conscious recollection. We show that divided attention, in comparison with full attention, can radically reduce a person's ability to recognize an item as previously presented while leaving intact the effects of that prior presentation on judgment. Furthermore, this potential for unconscious influence of the past leads to a role for conscious recollection that is directly counter to that advanced by folk wisdom. Rather than being a prerequisite for producing effects of the past, conscious recollection can be a means of escaping misleading effects of the past. The task that we used required subjects to judge whether a name was famous. In the first phase of each experiment, people read a list of names. Then those old names were mixed with new famous and new nonfamous names in a test of fame

Becoming famous without being recognized: Unconscious influences of memory produced by dividing attention.

Becoming famous without being recognized: Unconscious influences of memory produced by dividing attention.

An illusion of memory: False recognition influenced by unconscious perception.

The results of two experiments showed that an illusion of memory can be produced by unconscious perception. In a first phase of those experiments, a long list of words was presented for study. For the test of recognition memory given in the second phase of each experiment, presentation of a word preceded that of most recognition test words. Ss were to judge whether or not the test words had been presented during the earlier study phase of the experiment. Effects of a context word on this recognition memory decision were opposite when Ss were aware vs. unaware of its presentation. For example, as compared to a condition in which no context word was presented, the probability of false recognition was increased when Ss were unaware but decreased when Ss were aware of the presentation of a context word that matched the recognition test word. Results are discussed in terms of unconscious influences on an attribution process.

Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past.

Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past.

Revisionist Historians: Writers Reflected in their Writings

Historians are revisionists in that personal and cultural conditioning is automatically reflected in their interpretations. These influences, coupled with conscious efforts to reexamine material, result in revised interpretations from era to era. The fact that phenomena are interpreted differently over time is illustrated by contrasting views of Lowell Mason during his lifetime and our own era. In his day, Mason was criticized as an opportunist who played favorites; today he is criticized for plagiarizing as well as for promoting ersatz Pestalozzianism and colorless music. In the nineteenth century, he was praised as a teacher, a creator of “correct” music, and an advocate of church music. In the twentieth century, Mason is praised for instigating curricular school music. The nature of these views, then versus now, reflects the cultural conditioning and personalities of observers then versus now When we recognize these conscious and unconscious influences upon historical writing, we become more perceptive readers and more insightful writers.

Unconscious Influences of Memory for a Prior Event

We interpret the difference between aware and unaware forms of memory in terms of Polanyi's distinction between tool and object. Aware memory, such as recognition and recall, occurs when memory serves as an object of attention. Unaware memory occurs when memory serves as a tool to accomplish a present task. Both memory-as-tool and memory-as-object can rely on memory for specific prior experiences. Memory used as a tool is a pervasive form of unconscious influence. We present experiments in which memory used as a tool enhances perception, lowers the subjective experience of background noise, increases the fame of nonfamous names, and lowers estimates of the difficulty of anagrams. To escape the pervasive effects of unconscious memory, one must consciously remember the past experience, understand its influence in the present task, and possess a good theory to serve as an alternative basis for behavior. These three criteria may seldom be met.

Expanding the role of supervision in child psychiatric education.

Despite the burgeoning of available therapeutic interventions, the sparse literature devoted to child psychiatric supervision concentrates on individual psychotherapy. The non-cognitive aspects of the expanding supervisory challenge continues to converge on the clinician's personality, which is a focus of educational attention only in sequestered or haphazard parts of programs. The unidimensional supervisory literature addresses this issue by questioning the extent to which supervision should resemble traditional pedagogy or personal psychotherapy. In contrast to this emphasis on elusive unconscious influences on clinical work, scant attention has been devoted to other influences stemming from the clinician's current experiences, affiliations, identifications, aspirations and similar more easily modifiable factors that exert considerable leverage and tend to be more accessible to rational scrutiny in supervision. The latter half of this paper discusses these factors.

Experimental study of unconscious influences: ultrasound as a stimulus.

Experimental study of unconscious influences: ultrasound as a stimulus.

Toward a Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Bismarck

THE INCREASING INTEREST of psychoanalysts in history and of historians in psychoanalysis stems from a mutual need. The former have found it necessary to give greater attention to social and historical influences on the development of personality, while the latter are seeking a better understanding of irrational and unconscious influences on individual and group behavior in history.' On both sides the difficulties are formidable, most psychoanalysts knowing too little history and most historians too little psychoanalysis. Biographers have a special handicap: the subject is dead or, if alive, usually inaccessible to analysis. Material for analysis may be found in his writings, in his recorded speeches and conversations, and in the observations of others; yet this evidence will never suffice, for the primal experiences that produce the basic character traits occur in the earliest years of life and are hidden from the subject himself by repression and other mechanisms of defense. Often they can be uncovered only after months and years of careful work by the subject interacting with a skilled analyst. Another obstacle for the historian is skepticism2-a tendency to regard

Semantic and unconscious influences in tense usage

Semantic and unconscious influences in tense usage

Hypnotic Automatic Writing and a Proposal for Elucidation of Unconscious Influences in Psychological Experimentation

Automatic writing with special reference to hypnosis has long been known as an aid in the study of unconscious behavior. The writer's experimental work and clinical investigations in hypnotherapy and hypnoanalysis (1954, 1959) have revealed that automatic writing may serve (a) as an effective method for unveiling the ramifications of unconscious behavior with its ideational and affective components, and (b) as a way of eliciting responses which at times keenly portray unconscious attitudes that completely contradict consciously expressed views and overt behavior. Problem.-Many psychological experiments at times produce seemingly perplexing or contradictory results not amenable to clarification by careful investigation of Ss' conscious attitudes and reactions. Among these are (a) attitudes toward the requirements of the experiments, (b) attitudes toward Es, and (c) Ss' attitudes toward themselves and their performances. Furthermore, carefully repeated ex~eriments by the same and by different investigators often yield discordant returns without satisfactory explanation. ProposaL.-With selection of cooperative Ss, stress on experienced Es, and focus on appropriately selected problems for elucidation, hypnotic automatic writing may be employed to explore unconscious influences of the order mentioned above in crucial experiments heretofore beset with confusing outcomes based possibly on such hidden determinants. The most fruitful application appears to be in experimental settings relying on conscious choice and modification of behavior by Ss themselves. Intra- and inter-experimental discrepancies could be studied and clarified systematically. Clinical case illustration.-Preparatory to hypnoanalysis, a patient developing hypnotic abilities declined to open her eyes in hypnosis. Encouraged to do so, she refrained from looking directly at the therapist. Automatic writing assisted in revealing that she identified the therapist with someone linked to strong sexual associations. Her behavior war a defense against, yet a revelation of her own sexual impulses within the transference relationship. The hypnotic setting had intensified such impulses. Addendum.-Hypnotic Ss vary in aptirudes for automatic writing. Some are spontaneously proficient; others require a period of training and practice. They may be consciously aware or unaware of the content of their productions with automaticity of the writing unimpaired. For some Ss variants of automatic writing are effective. One example is the projection of such writing in visual iniagery during hypnosis. The form and content of the writing itself offers a vast area of intrinsic interest for the study of personality.

“A Severe Animadversion on Bossu”

An error has been committed at the expense of René Le Bossu, the noted seventeenth-century critic of the epic; and its elimination is important not only in justice to “the learned Bossu” but in correcting a widely accepted misinterpretation of one of our foremost English writers. Furthermore, in addition to affording belated personal justice, the correction will reveal a notable example of the unconscious influence of party spirit in criticism and scholarship, as a result of which cool and informed appraisal is sacrificed to the pleasure of ridicule.

Annual Address of the President: The Unconscious Influence of Science Studies

Annual Address of the President: The Unconscious Influence of Science Studies