Consequences of Automatic Evaluation: Immediate Behavioral Predispositions to Approach or Avoid the Stimulus

Abstract

Research on automatic attitude activation has documented a pervasive tendency to nonconsciously classify most if not all incoming stimuli as either good or bad. Two experiments tested a functional explanation for this effect. The authors hypothesized that automatic evaluation results directly in behavioral predispositions toward the stimulus, such that positive evaluations produce immediate approach tendencies, and negative evaluations produce immediate avoidance tendencies. Participants responded to attitude object stimuli either by pushing or by pulling a lever. Consistent with the hypothesis, participants were faster to respond to negatively valenced stimuli when pushing the lever away (avoid) than when pulling it toward them (approach) but were faster to respond to positive stimuli by pulling than by pushing the lever. This pattern held even when evaluation of the stimuli was irrelevant to the participants’ conscious task. The automatic classification of stimuli as either good or bad appears to have direct behavioral consequences.