Regular Article
Contraconscious Internal Theories Influence Lexical Choice during Sentence Completion

https://doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1994.1012Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper examines how inner theories (coherent sets of propositional beliefs and attitudes) influence lexical choice. Subjects in one study completed auditorily presented sentence fragments, some of which contained nonhuman antecedents such as dog and cat. Subjects were more likely to use human pronouns rather than it for referring to pets (e.g., parakeet) rather than nonpets (meadow lark), and antecedents that were liked (e.g., America) rather than disliked (Iran), familiar (e.g., a dog) rather than unfamiliar (a wolf), named (e.g., Kelly the Jellyfish) rather than unnamed (the jellyfish), rational (e.g., adult) rather than nonrational (fetus), and engaging in typically human rather than nonhuman activities (e.g., a bee that stores money rather than honey). The beliefs and attitudes underlying these pronoun choices intruded not just hypoconsciously (i.e., with fleeting and irretrievable awareness during processing of the sentences), but contraconsciously (i.e., with characteristics that contradict conscious intentions). A second study examined rapidly generated inferences that influenced what pronoun subjects chose to complete visually presented sentences, such as "When a student practices basketball instead of studying" and "When a student practices ballet instead of studying." The results indicated that inferences from beliefs (that males are likely to practice basketball, whereas females are likely to practice ballet) altered the choice of pronoun from predominately he to predominantly she. Other results indicated that pronouns have semi-autonomous functions of their own, and reflect beliefs and attitudes that vary with subject sex, and are context dependent, pragmatic in nature, and dynamic over time.

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