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Science 21 March 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5870, p. 1639
DOI: 10.1126/science.1150432
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Brevia

Preparing and Motivating Behavior Outside of Awareness

Henk Aarts,* Ruud Custers, Hans Marien

The mere activation of the idea of a behavioral act moves the human body without the person consciously deciding to take action. In an experiment, we showed that people subliminally primed with the concept of exertion were faster to squeeze a hand grip forcefully but expended more effort when the subliminal primes were directly accompanied by consciously visible positive stimuli. These findings demonstrate the human capacity to rely on mental processes in preparing and motivating behavior outside of awareness.

Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS Utrecht, Netherlands.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: h.aarts{at}uu.nl

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)