What is the difference between automatic and controlled thinking?

[ashleyjonelle25]

social psychology question
thank you

[Aunty Joyce]

Automatic thinking is not programmed, whereas controlled thinking involves manipulating thoughts by teaching that any other thoughts are unacceptable or brainwashing

[helen :}]

According to Aronson, Wilson, & Akert (2007), social cognition can be defined as how individuals process social information and apply it to social situations. There are two types of social cognitions, automatic thinking and controlled thinking. Automatic thinking is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless thoughts. It is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless because whenever we encounter a situation that we have experienced before, we would not need to analyze the situation as if it was our first time. Controlled thinking is different from automatic thinking in terms that controlled thinking is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful. In a way, controlled thinking is used when we first encounter a situation we have never experienced and after getting used to the situation, automatic thinking takes over. To understand how controlled and automatic thinking work together; imagine that an individual moves to a new town or city, that individual would not know how to get to the local restaurants, markets, stores, etc. So the individual will need to look at a map to get directions on how to get to the local restaurants, markets, etc. This is where controlled thinking is used; the individual looks up directions on how to get to his or her destination. Then after a while, the individual will become accustomed to the area that he or she does not need to think about how to get to his or her destination and that is how automatic thinking takes over.

Stolen off Wikipedia, which you could have done yourself. But I could have figured this out before I googled it, isn't it obvious? Automatic thinking is like that little voice in the back of your head that pipes up without you forcing your brain to actually think those words - if you pay attention to what's going on inside your head you can actually have a conversation between your automatic and controlled voice. Controlled thinking is where you actually make your brain think certain words or picture images, it takes effort and thought.
I don't do sociology or psychology and I knew that. But I think about things way too much.

[nicewheel284]

Yea, the first answer is referring to something different.

In SocialPsych Automatic thinking is your nonconscious or 'effortless' thinking so to speak. It relies on predeveloped schemas and is the sort of thinking that we rely on without noticing that we are thinking.

Controlled thinking is conscious, voluntary and intentional. It's the sort of thinking we employ when we are analyzing a situation, making an important decision, or even more generally when we encounter a new situation where we haven't developed precedent for our Automatic thinking to be used.

An example for it all I guess would be when you enter a new building and need to find a specific room. At first you'd have to check the map and follow signs, but after awhile of frequenting the place you come to direct yourself to the room almost 'without thought'. That kind of demonstrates the shift between controlled and automatic thinking.

There's more depth to it than this but that's the general distinction between the two types I think.