The generalization of deliberative and automatic behavior: The role of procedural knowledge and affective reactions

a r t i c l e i n f o Individuals' goal-directed activity in one situation can affect their behavior in a later, ostensibly unrelated situation. This effect can depend on whether the latter behavior is also goal-directed or is performed automatically. Three studies showed that participants' rate of speaking in the course of performing a speech shadowing task has a positive influence on the speed with which they later complete an ostensibly unrelated marketing survey. Furthermore, when participants' attention is called to the goal of working rapidly on the survey, the effect of their past behavior depends on their perception of the goal's desirability. When the time to complete the survey is not mentioned, however , participants' speed of working on the survey is influenced by their speed of speaking in the earlier situation without their awareness and it does not depend on the desirability of the goal with which their behavior is associated. An additional experiment showed that the relative impact of goal-directed and automatic processes also depends on the cognitive resources that people have available to construe the evaluative implications of their decisions. Conscious goal-directed activity typically requires a series of decisions to perform behavior that facilitates the attainment of the goal at hand. This behavior, in turn, comprises more specific cognitive and motor actions. Completing a survey, for example, may include reading the questions, retrieving judgment-relevant knowledge from memory , and circling the answers. When these actions are relevant to the objective being pursued, people may consciously decide on how to perform them. When they are incidental to individuals' primary objective , however, the actions could occur automatically and without awareness of how they are performed. If the time to complete a survey is limited, for example, people with a goal of finishing it might intentionally decide to work quickly. When speed is irrelevant to their goal, however, they may complete it without being conscious of how fast they are working. Similarly, speaking loudly or softly could sometimes result from a conscious decision to attain a goal that requires it (e.g., to override someone's attempt to interrupt or to avoid waking up the baby). At other times, the action might occur without any goal in mind to which it is relevant. As these examples suggest, goal-directed behavior is usually a mix of both deliberative and automatic processing. Moreover, the specific actions that compose this behavior …