The Influence of External Stimuli on the Generation of Voluntary Thoughts

A central question in psychology has been how involuntary cognitive processes interact with their voluntary counterparts. Stemming from the flanker and Stroop tasks, which have revealed that involuntary cognitive processes can counter and interfere with voluntary cognitive processes, the reflexive imagery task (RIT) has shown that stimuli can elicit involuntary higher-order cognitions. The extent to which stimulus-elicited involuntary processes can influence voluntary processes remains unknown. In our study, participants were instructed to, when presented with a cue (a square frame), think of a random word and disregard a line drawing that was presented concurrently. Would the presence of the line drawing influence the generation of the verbal imagery? Despite the participant’s intentions, the to-be-ignored line drawing had an influence over the participant’s response at a reliable, substantive rate- On over 35% of the trials, the word the participant thought of was associated with the name of the line drawing. On half of the trials, no line drawing was presented (the “No Line Drawing” condition). Participants’ sense of control and the extent to which the response (i.e., the word) was due to “the self,” was stronger in the No Line Drawing condition than in the condition in which a line drawing was presented. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.