ADVANCES IN Experimental Social Psychology E D I T E D BY M A R K P. ZANNA DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO WATERLOO, ONTARIO, CANADA VOLUME 33 ® ACADEMIC PRESS A Horcourt Scienceand TechnologyCompany San Diego London San Francisco Sydney Tokyo New York Boston CONTRIBUTORS Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin. JOHN A. BARGH (1), Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003 MELISSAJ. BEERS (189), Paul Werth Associates, Columbus, Ohio 43215 AP DIJKSTERHUIS (1), Department of Social Psychology, University of Nijmegan, 6500 HE, Nijmegan, The Netherlands JOHN DUCKITT (41), Psychology Department, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand SUSANT. FISKE (115), Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544 ANDREWL. GEERS (189), Department of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701 PETER GLICK (115), Psychology Department, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin 54912 IAN M. HANDLEY (189), Department of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701 LESLIE D. KIRBY (255), Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294 G. DANIELLASSITER (189), Department of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701 PATRICKJ. MUNHALL (189), Department of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701 REX A. WRIGHT (255), Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294 ix / THE PERCEPTION-BEHAVIOR EXPRESSWAY: AUTOMATIC EFFECTS OF SOCIAL PERCEPTION ON SOCIAL BEHAVIOR Ap Dijksterhuis John A. Bargh Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitativeness --William James (1890, p. 741) I. Introduction Some years ago, one of the authors was driving on a highway at a speed of about 85 miles an hour. Not surprisingly, after a while a police car turned up and the driver was summoned to stop. One of the officers approached the car and asked, "What do you think you're doing ? Have you j ust been watching the Formula One Grand Prix on TV?" The driver pondered this question for a while and said, somewhat hesitantly, "Well, yes, as a matter of fact I was." The officer, presumably a Formula One fan himself, nodded, smiled sympathetically, and gave the driver a steep fine. As William James noted in our opening quote, we have an innate tendency to imitate. We whisper to someone who is whispering; we start to speak much louder when others do so. We scratch our head upon seeing someone else scratch his or her head. We walk slower in the presence of the elderly, we cycle faster after we have seen a cycling race on TV, and, yes indeed, we get a fine for driving too fast after we have been watching a Formula One Grand Prix. In this chapter, we argue that this tendency to imitate is the consequence of the way w e - - o r , rather, our b r a i n s - - a r e shaped. We argue that social perception, defined here as the activation of a perceptual representation, has a direct effect on social behavior. Perceptual inputs are translated automatically into corresponding behavioral outputs, As a result, we often do what we see others doing. ADVANCES IN EXPERLMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 33 Copyright © 2001 by Academic Pl~ss. All rights of reproduction in any form reselwed. 0065-2601/01 $35.00 2 AP DIJKSTERHUISAND JOHN A. BARGH We must at the outset distinguish the present notion of a direct effect of perception on behavior from two major historical positions that are superficially similar. The first, the behaviorists' thesis that responses follow directly from perceived stimuli, or S-R bonds, also holds that perception directly leads to action (e.g., Skinner, 1938