People sometimes find themselves doing things that they did not set out to do. The theory of action identification suggests that people will make such discoveries under certain circumstances and then will continue to perform the action as newly understood; new action, then, will be the result. This action emergence phenomenon was investigated in two experiments. Each was designed to test the idea that people would embrace a new understanding of action-an emergent act identity-to the degree that this identity provided a more comprehensive understanding of the action than did a previous act identity. In Experiment 1, some subjects were induced to think about the details of the act of "going to college" (e.g., "studying"), whereas others were led to focus on more comprehensive meanings (e.g., "preparing for a career"). Those who concentrated on details were more susceptible to an emergent understanding of the act. They came to agree with an article that suggested that "going to college" results in "improving one's sex life" or "impairing one's sex life." Experiment 2 revealed that emergent identification can be translated into emergent action. Subjects in this study who were induced to think about the details of "drinking coffee"-by drinking their coffee in unwieldy cups-were more susceptible than those who drank from normal cups to a suggested action identification. They came to believe that "drinking coffee" amounts to "making myself seek stimulation" or to "making myself avoid stimulation," and subsequently followed the suggested action identification by turning up or down the volume of music they were hearing. Do people know what they are doing? Tra-have been more taken with the human tenditionally, the thinking of psychological the-dency to err, to stumble blindly into courses orists on this question has been strongly di-of action, and to imagine in retrospect what vided. Some have been impressed with the the action might be. Freud (1914/1960) saw human capacity to make plans, to verbalize knowledge of action largely as a matter of such intentions, and to consider possible courses of "self-discovery," and theorists since have araction, and so have argued that people know gued that people can only begin to understand what they are doing in advance of each action, an action once it is complete (e.g., Bern, 1972; This was the way James (1890) framed the Mead, 1938; Ryle, 1949). role of mind in action, and such ideas have In this article, we hope to show how both been echoed in many theories since (e.g., Harre of these seemingly contradictory views can be & Secord, 1973; Luria, 1961; Miller, Galanter, correct. For this purpose, we draw on the theft Pribram, 1960). Other theorists, however, ory of action identification (Vallacher & Wegner, in press), a theory that suggests that people always have available some conception of what they are doing. The theory indicates that in «*» «-• an understanding of action arises Allio and George Kiersted for help in conducting the re-before the act and continues to be relevant se...