The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of "Placebic" Information in Interpersonal Interaction

Three field experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that complex social behavior that appears to be enacted mindfully instead may be performed without conscious attention to relevant semantics. Subjects in compliance paradigms received communications that either were or were not semantically sensible, were or were not structurally consistent with their previous experience, and did or did not request an effortful response. It was hypothesized that unless the communication occasioned an effortful response or was structurally (rather than semantically) novel, responding that suggests ignorance of relevant information would occur. The predictions were confirmed for both oral and written communications. Social psychological theories that rely on humans actively processing incoming information are questioned in light of these results. Consider the image of man or woman as a creature who, for the most part, attends to the world about him or her and behaves on the basis of reasonable inference drawn from such attention. The view is flattering, perhaps, but is it an accurate accounting of covert human behavior? Social psychology is replete with theories that take for granted the "fact" that people think. Consistency theories (cf. Abelson et al., 1968), social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954; Schachter, 1959), and attribution theory (Heicler, 1958; Jones et al., 1972; Kelley, 1967), for example, as well as generally accepted explanations for phenomena like bystander (non)intervention (Darley & Latane, 1968), all start out with the underlying assumption that people attend to their