| Abstract: | Comments on J. A. Bargh and T. L. Chartrand's (see record 1999-05760-002) treatise on the pervasiveness of automaticity and its relation to self-regulation. Although Bargh and Chartrand pointed to the philosophy underlying current psychological theories about human activity, according to the present author they confused many important philosophical issues in presenting their argument. A specific point of contention is Bargh and Chartrand's misinterpretation of humanistic psychology as proposing a "causal self" as a mediator between the environment and one's responses to it. Such stimulus–organism–response formulations propose that aspects of the organism such as intention or will are shaped by and caused from without or from within by environmental or biological determinants. Thus, humanists cannot be endorsing a mediational model of activity. This misunderstanding by Bargh and Chartrand is important because such a misunderstanding of the debate between humanists and behaviorists allowed Bargh and Chartrand to erroneously subsume the humanists under the conceptual umbrella of mediational behaviorism. According to the present author, Bargh and Chartrand offered a narrow, and in some cases inaccurate, picture of the theoretical underpinnings of automaticity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
