Blissful Ignorance?

Although recent research has established the remarkable ways in which cognitive processing can occur without our being aware of it—for instance, casual exposure to retiree-related words, such as "elderly," induces us to walk more slowly—behavior that is directed toward goals still seems to be the product of conscious thought. Custers and Aarts (p. 47 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/329/5987/47) review a set of findings that point toward the possibility that goals may, in fact, also be vulnerable to manipulation via avenues of which we remain blissfully unaware. They place these results within a framework that reveals how thoroughly unconscious processes permeate our everyday activities.

from This Week in SCIENCE, Volume 329, Issue 5987
dated July 2 2010, is now available at:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol329/issue5987/twis.dtl

Science 2 July 2010:
Vol. 329. no. 5987, pp. 47 - 50
DOI: 10.1126/science.1188595

The Unconscious Will: How the Pursuit of Goals Operates Outside of Conscious Awareness
Ruud Custers* and Henk Aarts*

People often act in order to realize desired outcomes, or goals. Although behavioral science recognizes that people can skillfully pursue goals without consciously attending to their behavior once these goals are set, conscious will is considered to be the starting point of goal pursuit. Indeed, when we decide to work hard on a task, it feels as if that conscious decision is the first and foremost cause of our behavior. That is, we are likely to say, if asked, that the decision to act produced the actions themselves. Recent discoveries, however, challenge this causal status of conscious will. They demonstrate that under some conditions, actions are initiated even though we are unconscious of the goals to be attained or their motivating effect on our behavior. Here we analyze how goal pursuit can possibly operate unconsciously.

Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS Utrecht, Netherlands.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: r.custers@uu.nl (R.C.); h.aarts@uu.nl (H.A.)