After over a year apart, I got to meet some of my high-school friends again today around a table to know how we were all doing. During our time together, I found myself holding back against some intrusive thoughts and behaviours that I displayed back then. I thought about how behaviours we internalize over time affect us and recalled a paper about automatic social responses I read some time ago.
So here is a rundown of the ideas I recalled after reading that paper.
You got off a bad hook this morning and spent the morning arguing with your mom over something that you find silly in retrospect. Anyway, you are late for school. So, you rush out without having a proper breakfast. On your way to school, the taxi you’re in breaks so you end up running for the remaining 100m to get to school.
You finally make it but you’re also scolded by the discipline master for being late and you have to wait for the break period before you can get to class. The break period arrives and on your way to class, you meet your best friend, Jake, who in a friendly manner, asks you why you missed the first half of the day.
How do you respond to their question?
If your response tends to be friendly, then you’re experiencing an automatic social response to the situation which happens preconsciously.
Would you have reacted in the same friendly way if it were your classmate who regularly bashes you or makes mean jokes about your mishaps? I guess not. Even if at this particular time, they were expressing sincere concern for your well-being.
You may think that you have full control here and that you will be able to consciously give a non-hostile or more friendly response to the second scenario. But this is not the case as proven by the research presented in the paper: Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action.
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In the three experiments carried out in the research, the participants were primed by having them go through scrambled-sentence tasks.
In the first experiment, which aimed to test how long it would take for participants to interrupt the conversation of one of the experimenters, the participants were divided into three groups.
The first group was given a scrambled-sentence task filled with words relating to hostility, priming them for rudeness. The second group, however, was primed for politeness by giving them a scrambled-sentence task with words relating to politeness. The third group was a control group with a task containing neutral words.
During the experiments, none of the participants were aware of the priming or the main goal of the experiment. It was found that participants primed with hostility interrupted the second experimenter significantly faster than those primed with politeness while walking down the hallway for the second part of the experiment.
Now, you might think that in the scenario described before, you would be able to control your attitude towards your other classmates. But, you would be wrong.
Even with good intentions, you cannot control the influence you are not aware of. For example, a lot of people claim to be aware of and have control of the social media content they consume. This is simply not true for the vast majority of people.
Before most people realise it, a single “ding” has set the stage for consumption and they’re 1 hour in. Of course, you have the conscious choice to ignore it but also the stimuli have primed you to watch out for what just came in. This is one of the reasons I have no social media apps on my phone besides WhatsApp, mainly for family and friends.
In the following experiments, stereotypes were tested instead and with similar methods and participants were probed for awareness of what was actually happening.
Participants primed with the elderly stereotype like retirement, Florida, among others, walked more slowly down the hallway while those primed with the black African stereotype demonstrated more aggressiveness during a simulated data error while performing one of the tasks they were assigned to complete.
It is however important to note that activating these stereotypes will require the subjects to have the contents of the stereotype in their minds. For example, priming someone clueless about racism against Africans will not work as they simply don’t have the appropriate stereotypical content in mind.
Moreover, priming will only work if the trait concept or stereotype is a valid response to the current situation. Essentially, priming brings behavioural responses or ideas into scope in one’s mind but can only be used if it’s okay or not against your current goal to use it. Taking the example of our classmate again, you will most likely not show hostility towards them if your discipline master was very close as you will anticipate being given additional punishment that day.
How can I use this?
The example of social media influencing your behaviour by triggering automatic actions is a sample application of these findings.
Just like words and events can influence your behaviour, perceived attitude or environment can too.
Your friend may have asked about you in a friendly way but their historically hostile attitude towards you puts you in a defensive mode.
If you find you spend too much time on Instagram, for example, uninstall the app and use it over the web or not at all. In the absence of the app available on your home screen, you are less likely to find yourself in a situation that triggers the automatic response to open the app.
If you want to acquire a new habit/skill to read, turn off your mobile data, put your phone in another room and take a book with you for example. You create situations where your best choice is to practise that and over time, it will become a habit.
Of course, this second scenario will be harder as you would be aware of the fact. The challenge would be doing it enough times you become unaware of the induced response.