T he observation that the mere activation of the idea of a behavioral act moves the human body without the person consciously deciding to take action has long been a topic of scientific interest (1-3). Initially, this ideomotor principle was used to explain extraordinary activities such as compliance under hypnosis, automatic writing, dowsing, and swinging pendulums. Lately, research on social cognition and neuroscience has revealed that seeing or reading about a behavior available in the individual's repertoire increases the tendency to perform it, which has been interpreted as a result of the common code that action concepts share with motor programs. Whereas activating the mental representation of behavior outside of awareness-that is, subliminal priming-indeed prepares people to initiate rapidly the corresponding behavior, an important issue recently addressed is how such subliminal priming effects may acquire an intrinsic motivational property in the sense that people mobilize additional resources and actually spend effort on a task (4). We studied the emergence of such unconscious motivation by examining how subliminal priming of the action concept of physical exertion causes people to spend effort.Building on research on the basic role of affective value in reward learning and motivation, we propose that the mechanism that turns subliminal priming of action concepts into motivation relies on the tagging of positive affect to the action concept (5). Specifically, we investigated that activating the behavior representation of exertion through subliminal priming prepares the execution of the corresponding behavior and that this priming actually motivates effortful behavior when that representation is coactivated with positively valenced stimuli that act as a reward signal. To test this, we subjected 42 participants to a priming task that enabled us to combine the subliminal priming of words representing exertion with briefly presented, although consciously visible positive words [Supporting Online Material (SOM) text]. Accordingly, three different conditions were created: a (control) condition in which only positive stimuli were presented, a (priming) condition in which exertion was subliminally primed but not directly paired with positive stimuli, and a (primingplus-reward) condition in which exertion was subliminally primed and immediately linked to positive stimuli.After the manipulations, we recorded handgrip force, which allowed us to differentiate between action preparation and motivation. Participants were instructed to squeeze a hand grip for 3.5 s when the word "squeeze" appeared on the screen. Results (Fig. 1) showed that participants in the priming and priming-plus-reward conditions started to squeeze earlier and increased their force faster than those in the control condition: The reaction time was shorter, and the initial slope toward the maximal force (rate of increase in applied force) was steeper in these two priming conditions. This faster initiation of the response to squeeze the hand grip ...
The conscious experience of self-agency (i.e., the feeling that one causes one's own actions and their outcomes) is fundamental to human self-perception. Four experiments explored how experienced self-agency arises from a match between nonconsciously activated outcome representations and the subsequent production of the outcome and explored specifically how implicit motivation to produce the outcome may impinge on this process. Participants stopped a rapidly presented sequence of colors on a computer screen. Subsequently, they were presented with what could be the color on which they had stopped the sequence or a color that was randomly chosen by the computer. Agency ratings after each trial revealed that priming outcomes (a specific color) just before the outcome was produced enhanced experienced self-agency. Importantly, priming outcomes relatively far in advance also augmented self-agency, but only if the outcome was attached to positive affect and thus operating as a nonconscious goal maintaining the outcome representation active over time. As such, these studies show how the mechanisms underlying nonconscious goal pursuit promote experiences of self-agency, thus integrating 2 lines of research that so far have led separate lives.
Building on research on unconscious human goal pursuit and the dynamic nature of our mental and physical world, this study examined the idea that an unconsciously activated goal hijacks executive control for its own attainment. This "hijacking" of the executive function by an unconscious goal should be evidenced by impaired performance on an unrelated task relying on executive control. The results of 6 experiments show that subliminal activation of a socializing goal, or an idiosyncratic personal goal, or an academic goal, harmed participants' performance on an executive function task, such as inhibition of prepotent responses and detection of text errors during reading. These effects were unique to executive control, were similar when the goal was activated consciously, and were independent of task motivation and perceived inter-goal relatedness between the primed goal and task goal. Furthermore, an unconscious goal occupied executive control to advance itself more strongly when the goal had personal value. Implications for theory and research on unconscious goal pursuit and the executive function are discussed.
Objective: Habitual behaviours are triggered automatically, with little conscious forethought. Theory suggests that making healthy behaviours habitual, and breaking the habits that underpin many ingrained unhealthy behaviours, promotes long-term behaviour change. This has prompted interest in incorporating habit formation and disruption strategies into behaviour change interventions. Yet, notable research gaps limit understanding of how to harness habit to change real-world behaviours. Methods: Discussions among health psychology researchers and practitioners, at the 2019 European Health Psychology Society 'Synergy Expert Meeting' , generated pertinent questions to guide further research into habit and health behaviour.
Effective human action is dependent on goals that are cued in the environment. A major challenge in examining the environmental control of goal-directed behavior concerns a proper test of the mediating role of outcome value in cue-driven behavior. Building on the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) paradigm, in two experiments we tested a novel forced-choice multiple response task that allowed us to test specific PIT effects by analyzing RTs and accuracy. We hypothesized and found that a Pavlovian cue that was predictive of low or high valued outcomes triggered instrumental responses when the cue and response shared the same outcome compared to when the cue and response did not share the same outcome. Importantly, these effects were more pronounced for high (vs. low) value outcomes, suggesting a value-based specific PIT effect. Theoretical implications and future directions for this novel PIT paradigm are briefly discussed.
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