Controlled Thinking
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According to Aronson, Wilson, & Akert (2007), social cognition can be defined as how individuals process social information and apply it to social situations. There are two types of social cognitions, automatic thinking and controlled thinking. Automatic thinking is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless thoughts. It is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless because whenever we encounter a situation that we have experienced before, we would not need to analyze the situation as if it was our first time. Controlled thinking is different from automatic thinking in terms that controlled thinking is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful. In a way, controlled thinking is used when we first encounter a situation we have never experienced and after getting used to the situation, automatic thinking takes over. To understand how controlled and automatic thinking work together; imagine that an individual moves to a new town or city, that individual would not know how to get to the local restaurants, markets, stores, etc. So the individual will need to look at a map to get directions on how to get to the local restaurants, markets, etc. This is where controlled thinking is used; the individual looks up directions on how to get to his or her destination. Then after a while, the individual will become accustomed to the area that he or she does not need to think about how to get to his or her destination and that is how automatic thinking takes over.
Automatic thinking may be useful to individuals because it does not use a lot of mental effort to do a task, but controlled thinking is considered necessary whenever an individual wants to plan ahead for something, do things that are not part of his or her daily routines, or even make decisions in certain situations. Payne (2005) states that executive control is referred to as a “constellation of interrelated mental processes” that helps individuals attain their goals. These mental processes also include planning and monitoring behavior, as well as coordinating behavior in any type of situations. One can say, controlled thinking is similar to executive control in terms that individuals uses executive control whenever automatic thinking is not enough to attain one’s goal(s) (Diamond, 2006; Payne 2005).
Besides planning for something or making decisions during situations, controlled thinking is also used during times of deception or lying. According to Gombos, (2007) when someone is using deception, one will need to control their vocal, facial, and body gestures to show that he or she is saying a statement that is believable. External features are not the only things one must control in order to make a lie believable, one must also inhibit the truth and fabricate a plausible statement or story to tell the listener (Gombos, 2007). Since controlled thinking is an effortful, intentional, conscious and voluntary cognitive process, suppressing the truth and making up a lie falls under the four categories of what controlled thinking is.
Example - Research
Inhibiting mental thoughts is not always a bad thing to do. Stewart and Payne (2008) conducted an experiment to see whether implementing thoughts or beliefs may counter or reduce automatic thinking in individuals. Their experiment involved the weapons-identification paradigm, where the participants are shown a picture of a person holding an object for 250 milliseconds and the participants must quickly decide whether the person holding an object is a gun or a tool. Stewart and Payne came up with the hypothesis that participants in the “safe” group will respond less stereotypically than participants in the “accurate” and “quick” group. In the “quick” group, participants were instructed to answer whether the object was a tool or handgun as quickly as possible. The “safe” group was instructed to commit themselves to think the word “safe” when shown a picture depicting a Black face and to remind themselves that the participant is just as safe when interacting with a Black individual as with a White individual. The “accurate” group was instructed to commit themselves to think of the word “accurate” when shown pictures depicting a Black face, also participants were told to accurately identify the object that appears after the Black and White faces. The experimenters believed that the “safe” group’s responses will be significantly different than the “accurate” and “quick” group because the task already required participants to respond quickly and accurately to pictures. The experimenters calculated how many participants falsely identified the object as either a tool or gun after being primed with a Black or White face. The results of the experiment were that there was a significant difference when participants falsely identified a tool as a gun when shown a Black face in both the “accurate” and “quick” group. Also, there was a significant difference when participants falsely identified a gun as a tool when shown a White face in both the “accurate” and “quick” group. Lastly, there were no significant differences when participants falsely identified a tool as a gun when being shown a Black or White faces. The importance of this experiment is that individuals can have control of their automatic thought process if they put effort into it, but they have to be aware that there are implicit stereotypes they may hold.
Example – Real Life
In season six, episode five of House, there is a patient who believes he is going to die of a heart attack right after he turns 40 years old because his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather died of a heart attack when they turned 40 years old. The patient has been to many cardiologists and they did not find anything wrong with the patient’s heart. The patient believes that no doctor will be able to find anything wrong with him and he will die of a heart attack at the age of 40 and because of this belief, he lives a reckless life alone. House’s team believed the patient had a genetic heart condition and did several tests to find something wrong, but ended up with negative test results. Then at 16 minutes and 25 seconds in the episode, House made up an illness, Ortoli Syndrome, to prove the patient wrong about not being able to find what is wrong with him, but House did not inform Chase that he will make up a fake illness (Shore, Kaplow, & Shakman, 2009). Chase had to pause for a second and think of an explanation of what Ortoli Syndrome is and how it affects the individual. As one can see, Chase had to pause for a second and come up with a believable lie to tell the patient. Chase was consciously aware that he needs to make the Ortoli Syndrome believable and that requires mental effort to come up with a lie, his intention was to lie to the patient, and it was voluntary because Chase did not tell the truth that there is no such thing as Ortoli Syndrome. In this example, House and Chase lied to the patient so that he will believe that his condition is cured and is able to live his life without thinking he will die when he turns 40 years old.
References
Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. (2007). Social Cognition: How We Think about the Social World. In Social Psychology (pp. 57-89). New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Diamond, A. (2006). The Early Development of Executive Functions. Lifespan cognition: Mechanisms of change (pp. 70-95). New York, NY US: Oxford University Press.
Gombos, V. (2006). The cognition of deception: The role of executive processes in producing lies. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 132(3), 197-214.
Payne, B. (2005). Conceptualizing Control in Social Cognition: How Executive Functioning Modulates the Expression of Automatic Stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(4), 488-503.
Shore, D., Kaplow, L. (Writer), & Shakman, M. (Director). (2009). Brave Heart [Television series episode]. In M. G. Kaplow & S. Hess (Producers), House M.D.. Los Angeles: Fox Network.
Stewart, B., & Payne, B. (2008). Bringing automatic stereotyping under control: Implementation intentions as efficient means of thought control. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(10), 1332-1345.
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