title: Of mice and men: what animal research can tell us about context effects on automatic responses in humans.
abstract: Automatic responses play a central role in many areas of psychology. Counter to views that such responses are relatively rigid and inflexible, a large body of research has shown that they are highly context-sensitive. Research on animal learning and animal behavior has a strong potential to provide a deeper understanding of such context effects by revealing remarkable parallels between the functional properties of automatic responses in human and nonhuman animals. These parallels involve the contextual modulation of attitude formation and change (automatic evaluation), and the role of contextual contingencies in shaping the particular action tendencies in response to a stimulus (automatic behavior). Theoretical concepts of animal research not only provide novel insights into the processes and representations underlying context effects on automatic responses in humans; they also offer new perspectives on the interface between affect, cognition, and motivation.
authors.affiliation: The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. bgawrons@uwo.ca
authors.forename: Bertram
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gawronski
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cesario
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D032761:Animal Experimentation; D000818:Animals; D001143:Arousal; D001290:Attitude; D001332:Automatism / Q000523:psychology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003071:Cognition; D056348:Emotional Intelligence; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D051379:Mice; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009042:Motivation; D055139:Sensory Gating; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal; D012931:Social Environment; D013045:Species Specificity