Automatic and controlled processes: Difference between revisions

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===Automatic processes===

When examining the label "automatic" in social psychology, we find that some processes are intended, and others require recent conscious and intentional processing of related information. Automatic processes are more complicated than people may think.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fridland|first=Ellen|date=November 2017|title=Automatically minded|journal=Synthese|language=en|volume=194|issue=11|pages=4337–4363|doi=10.1007/s11229-014-0617-9|issn=0039-7857}}</ref> Some examples of automatic processes include motor skills, implicit biases, procedural tasks, and priming.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Trumpp|first=Natalie M.|last2=Traub|first2=Felix|last3=Kiefer|first3=Markus|date=2013-05-31|editor-last=Chao|editor-first=Linda|title=Masked Priming of Conceptual Features Reveals Differential Brain Activation during Unconscious Access to Conceptual Action and Sound Information|journal=PLoS ONE|language=en|volume=8|issue=5|pages=e65910|doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0065910|issn=1932-6203|pmc=3669239|pmid=23741518}}</ref>  The tasks that are listed can be downdone without the need for conscious attention. Implicit biases are snap judgments that people make without being aware that they made them. An example of an implicit bias is when someone is walking down the street at night and they see a dark shadow of a person. The person might automatically cross the street or they might be scared of that individual. This is all done in a fraction of a second without the person even knowing they are making that judgment about the black person. Priming is when a stimulus from the environment changes the way one someone reacts to another stimulus.  An example of this is when someone sees a fast food sign and realizes they are hungry. This causes them to stop and get something to eat.

That being said automatic effects fall into three classes: Those that occur prior to conscious awareness (preconscious); those that require some form of conscious processing but that produce an unintended outcome (postconscious); and those that require a specific type of intentional, goal directed processing (goal-dependent).