Microsoft Word Chapter 1 done doc

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4.2.1 Automatic Processing and Automatic Social Behavior : 
 
We have already learned about the schemas. In order to 
demonstrate the effect of automatic processing on automatic social 
behavior, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) conducted some 
experiments. In one of the experiments, they wanted to find the 
impact of rude and polite schema on subject’s behavior. These 
schemas were activated by giving scrambled sentences containing 
words relevant schema. There were three groups of subjects. The 
group one had received scrambled sentences containing words 
related to rudeness, group two received words related to politeness 
and group three received unrelated words. After this task, they 
were suppose to report to the experimenter and ask for the next 
task. The experimenter was talking to another person 
(confederate). Experimenter ignored the subjects. Whether subject 
interrupted this conversation or not was the dependent variable. It 
was found that group 1 subjects interrupted the conversation more 
than anybody, confirming the hypothesis that the behavior has 
occurred in automatic manner. Further, it was found that it had no 
relation with subject’s ratings of experimenter’s politeness. In 
another study, they found that when the schema for ‘old age’ is 
activated, the subjects walked slowly than when it was not 
activated. Obviously confirming that the stereotypes, which are one 
type of schemas, have an impact on automatic behavior. In other 
studies, they have found that automatic processing have general 
effects than specific ones. They concluded that once automatic 
processing is activated, people automatically get ready for the 
interactions with the people for whom the schema is activated.
4.2.2 Benefits of Automatic Processing : 
 
It is well known that the automatic processing is 
comparatively effortless, fast and efficient. In addition, whether it is 
beneficial than the systematic controlled processing is an 
interesting question to answer. Dijksterhuis and van Olden (2006) 
conducted an experiment showing the benefits of automatic 
processing. They investigated effects of immediate, conscious 
(controlled, systematic), and unconscious (uncontrolled, automatic) 
processing on satisfaction with the decision. They had three groups 
of subjects. The looked at posters and indicated their liking. Group 
1 (immediate condition) has seen all the posters simultaneously 
and had to make decision immediately. Group 2 (Conscious 
condition) saw each poster for 90 seconds, listed their thoughts and 
evaluation systematically. Group 3 (Unconscious condition) worked 
on anagram problem after seeing the pictures, giving them no time 
to think. Later on they indicated their preferences. Subjects were 
gifted the posters of their choice. After five week, they were asked 
about their satisfaction with the poster and the money that they 
would want to sell it off. The figure 1 below clearly shows the 

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results obtained by these researchers. These finding clearly 
indicate that the group that processed the information 
systematically was most dissatisfied group whereas the one that 
processed information automatically was most satisfied group. 
This may be due to the different capacity of the two processing 
style to process the information, automatic superseding. This and 
similar studies indicates that automatic processing is not only 
effortless but can be useful too.