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Journal
of
Personality
and
Social
Psychology
1978, Vol.
36, No. 6,
635-642
The
Mindlessness
of
Ostensibly
Thoughtful
Action:
The
Role
of
"Placebic"
Information
in
Interpersonal
Interaction
Ellen
Langer
Harvard University
Arthur
Blank
and
Benzion
Chanowitz
The
Graduate
Center
City University
of New
York
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 par-
adigms received communications that either were
or
were
not
semantically sensi-
ble, 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 commu-
nications. 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
gen-
erally accepted explanations
for
phenomena
like
bystander
(non)intervention
(Darley
&
Latane,
1968),
all
start
out
with
the
underly-
ing
assumption that people attend
to
their
The
authors
are
grateful
to
Robert
Abelson
for his
comments
on an
earlier draft
of
this manuscript
and
to
Cynthia Weinman
for
conducting
Experiment
1.
Requests
for
reprints should
be
sent
to
Ellen
Langer, Department
of
Psychology
and
Social
Rela-
tions, 1318 William
James
Hall,
Harvard
University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.
world
and
derive behavioral
strategies
based
on
current incoming information.
The
ques-
tion raised here
is not
whether these formula-
tions
are
correct,
nor is it
whether people
are
capable
of
thoughtful action.
Instead,
we
question
how
often
people outside
of the
labo-
ratory
are
actually mindful
of the
variables
that
are
relevant
for the
subject
and for the
experimenter
in the
laboratory,
and by im-
plication,
then,
how
adequate
our
theories
of
social psychology really are.
This
article questions whether,
in
fact,
be-
havior
is
actually accomplished much
of the
time
without paying
attention
to the
substan-
tive details
of the
"informative" environment.
This idea
is
obviously
not
new. Discussions
of
mind/body
dualism
by
philosophers
and the
consequences
that
different
versions
of
this
relation
have
on its
status
as an
isomorphic,
deterministic,
or
necessary relationship
be-
tween
the two are
part
of
psychology's her-
itage.
However,
the
extent
of the
implications
of
this idea
has not
been
fully
appreciated
nor
researched.
How
much behavior
can go on
without
full
awareness? Clearly, simple motor
acts
may be
overlearned
and
performed auto-
Copyright
1978
by the
American
Psychological
Association, Inc.
0022-3514/78/3606-0635$00.7S
635
636
E.
LANGER,
A.
BLANK,
AND
B.
CHANOWITZ
matically,
but
what about complex social
in-
teractions?
The
class
of
behavior
of
greatest
interest
here
is not
that which
is
commonly under-
stood
to be
automatic, such
as
walking
or
typewriting,
but
rather
that
which
is
com-
monly
assumed
to be
mindful
but may be, in
fact,
rather automatic.
We
shall
refer
to it
here
as
mindless
behavior—mindless
in the
sense
that attention
is not
paid precisely
to
those
substantive
elements
that
are
relevant
for
the
successful
resolution
of the
situation.
It has all the
external earmarks
of
mindful
action,
but new
information
actually
is not
being
processed.
Instead, prior scripts,
written
when
similar
information
really
was
once
new,
are
stcreotypically
reenacted.
Berne (1964)
discussed
the
idea
of
scripts
in a
popularized
way,
and
Abelson (1976) rigorously elab-
orated
the
concept
in
generating
a
computer
simulation
of
belief
systems.
To
Abelson,
a
script
is a
"highly
stylized sequence
of
typical
events
in a
well-understood
situation,
...
a
coherent
sequence
of
events expected
by the
individual, involving
him
either
as a
participant
or as an
observer."
(p. 33)
(See
Author's
note,
p.
642.)
The
notion
of a
script
was
used
-to
describe
a
study
by
Langer
and
Abelson
(1972),
where
it was
argued
that
asking
a
favor
had
certain
script
dimensions
and
that
the
success
of
getting
compliance depended
on the
specific
syntax
of the
request rather than
on the
specific
content
of the
statement,
fn
that
study,
the
words making
up the
request were
held
constant, while
the
order
of the
words
spoken
was
varied.
The
opening words deter-
mined
which script
was
followed,
and
compli-
ance
varied
accordingly. Similar
to the
notion
of
script
is
Goffman's
(1974) concept
of
frames,
Harre
and
Secord's
(1973) idea
of
episode,
Thorngate's
(1976) idea
of
carica-
ture,
Miller,
Galanter,
and
Pribram's
(1960)
notion
of
plans,
and
Neisser's
(1967)
concept
of
preattentive
processing.
Each
of
these for-
mulations
speaks
1,0
the
individual's ability
to
abide
by the
particulars
of the
situation
without mindful reference
to
those particulars.
However,
while
Abelson
has
come closest
to
delineating
the
structure
of
scripts,
no one
has yet
experimentally
determined
the
min-
imum
requirements necessary
to
invoke
a
par-
ticular
script,
nor has
scripted behavior really
been demonstrated
to be
mindless.
While
the
former
issue
is not
addressed
in the
present
article,
the
latter
is the
article's main concern,
and we may
shed
some
light
on the
require-
ments
for
script learning
and
enactment
once
the
mindlcssness
of
ostensibly thoughtful
actions
has
been demonstrated.
This
suggests
that
the
essence
of a
script
may not lie in
recurring
semantics
but
rather
in
more general
paralinguistic
features
of the
message. When
we
speak
of
people
organizing incoming
in-
formation,
it is as
important
to
take into
account what
they
systematically
ignore
as it
is
to
take
into
account what they systemat-
ically
process.
And
when
we
speak
of
people
ignoring
information,
it is
important
to
dis-
tinguish
between
information
that
is
ignored
because
it is
irrelevant
and
information
that
is
ignored
because
it is
already
known.
It is
known
because
it has
been seen many times
in
the
past,
and
aspects
of its
structure
that
regularly
appear
indicate
that
this
time
is
just
like
the
last. Thus, what
is
meant
by
mind-
lessness here
is
this
specific
ignorance
of
relevant substance.
This
article reports three
field
experiments
undertaken
to
test
the
mindlessness
of
osten-
sibly
thoughtful
action
in the
domains
of
spoken
and
written communication.
It was
hypothesized
that
when
habit
is
inadequate,
thoughtful
behavior
will
result
and
that this
will
be the
case when cither
of two
conditions
is
met:
(a)
when
the
message transmitted
is
structurally
(rather than scmantically)
novel
or (b)
when
the
interaction
requires
an ef-
fortful
response.
Experiment
1
Method
The first
experiment
was
conducted
in
the
context
of
a
compliance
paradigm, where
people
about
to
use
a
copying
machine were
asked
to
let
another
per-
son use it
first.
The
study utilized
a 3 X 2
factorial
design
in
which
the
variables
of
interest
were
the
type
of
information
presented
(request;
request plus
"placcbic"
information;
request
plus real informa-
tion)
and the
amount
of
effort
compliance
entailed
(small
or
large).
Subjects.
The
subjects
were
120
adults
(68
males
and
52
females)
who
used
the
copying machine
at
the
Graduate Center
of
the
City University
of
New
MINDLESSNESS
OF
OSTENSIBLY
THOUGHTFUL
ACTION
637
York.
Each person
who
approached
the
machine
on
the
days
of the
experiment
was
used
as a
subject
unless
there
was a
line
at the
machine when
the
experimenter
arrived
or a
person came
to use the
machine
immediately
after
a
subject
had
been
ap-
proached.
(There
was a
minimum
wait
of S
minutes
between
subjects).
Half
of the
experimental
sessions
were
conducted
by a
female
who was
blind
to
the
experimental
hypotheses,
and
the
remaining sessions
were
run by a
male
experimenter
who
knew
the
hypotheses.
Procedure.
Subjects
were
randomly assigned into
one
of
the
groups
described
below.
The
experimenter
was
seated
at a
table
in the
library that permitted
a
view
of the
copier.
When
a
subject approached
the
copier
and
placed
the
material
to
be
copied
on the
machine,
the
subject
was
approached
by the
experi-
menter
just
before
he or she
deposited
the
money
necessary
to
begin copying.
The
subject
was
then
asked
to let the
experimenter
use the
machine
first
to
copy either
5 or 20
pages.
(The number
of
pages
the
experimenter
had,
in
combination with
the
num-
ber
of
pages
the
subject had, determined whether
the
request
was
small
or
large.
If the
subject
had
more
pages
to
copy than
the
experimenter,
the
favor
was
considered
small,
and if the
subject
had
fewer
pages
to
copy,
the
favor
was
taken
to
be
large).
The ex-
perimenter's
request
to
use
the
machine
was
made
in
one of the
following
ways:
1.
Request
only.
"Excuse
me, I
have
S
(20) pages.
May
I use the
xerox
machine?"
2.
Placebic
infor