Explain various behavioral implications of control?

Answer 1

Automatic and Controlled Processes in Behavioural

Control: Implications for Personality Psychology

INTRODUCTION

Mechanisms of behavioural control (e.g. automatic vs. controlled processing) are

fundamental in psychological explanation; and individual differences in these mechanisms

may be assumed to play an equally important role in personality psychology. As Carver,

European Journal of Personality

Eur. J. Pers. 24: 376–403 (2010)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.779

*Correspondence to: Philip J. Corr, University of East Anglia, UK. E-mail: p.corr@uea.ac.uk

Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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LEVELS OF BEHAVIOURAL CONTROL

This section presents some of the ‘scene-setting’ material in preparation for the articulation

of the major theoretical problems. It should prove useful in avoiding any misunderstandings concerning the nature of the model proposed.

Cognition

It is important to be clear as to what is meant by ‘cognition’, especially in the way it differs

from ‘non-cognitive’ (e.g. ‘biological’) explanations. The concept of ‘cognition’, as used

1

This paper is not concerned with the nature of consciousness per se. It is concerned with how processing at the

controlled level, which often has representation in conscious awareness, relates to processing at the automatic

level. In a closed physical-causal system, themental aspect of conscious awareness (the experience of it) should be

clearly differentiated from the mechanisms that control it, the latter of which interfaces with automatic levels of

control

in this paper, refers to the capacity to know and to have knowledge; and this definition

includes the structures and information processes that support knowing/knowledge. This

knowledge and the processes of ‘knowing’ are embedded in structures, beliefs and

operations (e.g. decision-making) that, in a fundamental conceptual sense, exist

independently of nervous activity (although, of course, they are instantiated in this

activity). For example, knowledge of Renaissance art, as contrasted with Cubism, is not

determined by nerve assemblies—although, it should not be forgotten that our visual

perception of art is determined by nervous system activity (e.g. the construction of the

qualia2

of colour from electromagnetic reflections from the paint surface). This knowledge

is often, but need not be, accessible to conscious awareness; however, to avoid the everpresent Cartesian trap, it is not assumed that conscious awareness comprises or controls the

underlying cognitive mechanisms; rather, it is seen as one of outputs of controlled

processing.3

Thus, one major problem that any theory of cognition and behaviour must address—

to the extent that cognition is different from motor control processes—is how

knowledge-level structures/processes interface with biological structures/processes of

the neuroendocrine system to affect immediate behaviour. In cybernetic terms, cognitive

knowledge structures/processes must interface with behavioural systems in order to set

the weights at critical points in the regulatory feedback system that choreographs and

controls behaviour—as elaborated below, behaviour is always initiated and executed at

a pre-conscious, automatic level: Mind events follow brain events. This is a basic tenet

of materialist brain science, which in one form or another is the standard model

endorsed (or, at least, not openly disavowed) by (the majority of) contemporary

researchers.

Dual-process models

The need to differentiate levels of behavioural control is demonstrated by the wide variety

of dual-process models in the literature (e.g. Carver, 2005; Eisenberg, 2002; Epstein, 1973,

1994; Evans, 2003; Hirsh, 1974; Lieberman, Gaunt, Gilbert, & Trope, 2002; Metcalfe &

Mischel, 1999; Rolls, 1999; Rothbart & Bates, 2006; Rothbart, Sheese, & Conradt, 2009;

Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Toates, 1998, 2006; see Carver et al., 2008). Most of these models

contain a combination of the following features:

1. Automatic (reflexive): Fast, coarse-grained, ballistic (implicit/procedural learning), and

pre/non-conscious.

2. Controlled (reflective): Slow, fine-grained, deliberative (explicit/declarative learning),

and often accessible to conscious awareness.

SUMMARY OF THE PROBLEM

The problem to be addressed by the model of behavioural control may now be summarised.

At the point of initiation and execution, all brain-behavioural processes are controlled by

the automatic-reflexive system, and the operations of this system cannot be affected

simultaneously by high-level controlled processes, and nor can they be consciously known

as only their products are represented in conscious awareness. In order to eschew a

dualistic position, brains events must precede mind events, always.

6

Now, if controlled processing and conscious awareness comes only after corresponding

brain events and is the outcome, or product, of such causally sufficient processing, then

how do controlled-reflective (often, but not necessarily, conscious) processes exert any

influence (if they do) on automatic-reflexive (pre/non-conscious) processes? This is a

central question in general psychology and personality psychology. It resides at the core of

the issue of how multiple level processes interface; and how personality factors and

processes operate at and between these levels.

Inhibition of pre-potent behaviour

Automatic routines are well suited to reacting to predictable stimuli from a pre-existing

behavioural repertoire; however, such automatic behaviours are not so good for tasks

requiring a departure from fixed routines (e.g. a novel task), or when automatic behaviour is

not going to plan. Much of cognitive processing involves inhibitory functions, and the ‘late

error detection mechanism’, activated when things are not going to plan, serves this

function well.

An experimental demonstration of the power of conscious awareness to inhibit prepotent (automatic) responses is seen in the ‘Jacoby exclusion task’ (Debner & Jacoby,

1994). Briefly, words are presented either too fast for conscious recognition (i.e.

50 milliseconds) or slow enough for recognition (i.e. 150 milliseconds); backward masking

is used to ensure these precise presentation times. In this experimental paradigm,

participants are presented with the prime-word, for example:

HOUSE

They are then given a stem-completion task, for example:

HOU__

A possible stem completion is to add S and E to form ‘HOUSE’.

Now, the crucial manipulation in this task is the instruction to participants not to

complete the word-stem with a prime-word. In the above example, it might be completed

with N and D to form ‘HOUND’.

This task is trivially easy for most

DEFENSIVE SYSTEMS OF BEHAVIOUR

The above discussion of the functions of consciousness has taken place in relation to the

BIS, which is part of the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) of personality (Corr &

McNaughton, 2008; Gray & McNaughton, 2000; McNaughton & Corr, 2004, 2008a)

which comprises two other major systems, discussed below. RST provides a convenient

model of the automatic processes involved in approach and avoidance behaviour with

which to start to build a model of behaviour control.8

In brief, RST comprises three systems as follows:

(1) The fight–flight–freeze system (FFFS) is responsible for mediating reactions to all

aversive stimuli, conditioned and unconditioned, and is responsible for avoidance and

escape behaviours. It mediates the emotion of fear, and the associated personality

factor consists of fear-proneness, timidity and avoidance.

(2) The behavioral approach system (BAS) mediates reactions to all appetitive stimuli,

conditioned and unconditioned, and is responsible for approach to appetitive stimuli. It

mediates the emotion of hope and anticipatory pleasure, and the associated personality

factor consists of optimism, reward-orientation and impulsiveness.

(3) The BIS is responsible for the detection and resolution of goal-conflict in very general

terms (e.g. between BAS-approach and FFFS-avoidance), and evolved to permit an

animal to withhold entrance (i.e. passive avoidance) or to enter a dangerous situation

(i.e. leading to cautious ‘risk assessment’ behaviour), such as a foraging field where

predators may be hiding. Its principal function is to resolve the evolutionarily

Executive control

A high level of coordination is needed to ensure flexible behaviour, involving attention,

decision-making and integrative functions. Whilst the hippocampus (and other distributed

structures) of the BIS may be necessary to mediate error signals, they work in conjunctions

with cortical stores of information reflecting the conflicts between goals. In addition,

activation of the PFC is also expected to be important. With complex behaviour that entails

even a modicum of conflict, there is potential for behavioural interference. PFC has been

assigned an important role in resolving this behavioural problem. Miller and Cohen (2001)

provide a review, and an outline of a model, of how the PFC functions to achieve this

coordination. They note that, in order to avoid this behavioural confusion, mechanisms

must have evolved that coordinate low-level sensory and motor processes according to the

representation of internal goals—this view fits snugly with the cybernetic view of

behavioural control advanced in this paper, as well as with the view of the BIS as a goalconfliction detection/resolution device.

Some general implications of the model

Individual differences within these two major systems of behavioural control, as well as

their interplay, should account for important sources of variance between people. Some

potential implications are outlined below.

First, a person could have all the ‘will’ (i.e. high-level controlled processing and

conscious desire) in the world to behave in a certain way (e.g. dieting), but their ‘will’ can

only translate into actual behaviour if the controlled processing system is able to interface

effectively with the automatic processing system that, in a proximal sense, controls

immediate behaviour (e.g. priming effects by hunger). Secondly, difficult-to-stop

emotions/behaviours feature prominently in personality psychology (as well as in many

psychiatric disorders). In the case of emotional engagement and expression, especially as

seen in the dysfunction of regulation in mood disorders, automatic defensive reactions are

often difficult to stop or inhibit (e.g. depressive rumination and violent rage)—drugs may

directly inhibit these automatic processes, but ‘talk therapy’ (e.g. cognitive-behavioural

therapy) would also have the power to modify the cybernetic weights of these automatic

processes by engaging controlled (usually consciously-mediated) processes. Thirdly, there

may be insufficient representation by controlled processes in automatic processes, leading

to hard-to-stop counter-productive behaviours. For example, cigarette smoking may be

difficult to stop because there is more salient (in terms of priming) representation in the

automatic-reflexive processes than controlled-reflective ones.