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The goal of behavioral control is of central importance in everyday life. When the production of an unwanted action can have deleterious consequences for perceivers, there is considerable virtue in the possession of a mental system that edits its behavioral products to meet the demands of a challenging world. Accordingly, in an attempt to extend existing work on this topic (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows 1996), in the present research we investigated the extent to which the automatic elicitation of action may be moderated by features of the task environment and perceivers' goal states. Our findings were unequivocal. When inhibitory cues were present in the environment (i.e., Experiment 1), or perceivers had a competing goal in mind (i.e., Experiment 2), automatic behavioral priming effects were eliminated. We consider the implications of our findings for recent treatments of behavioral priming and action control. The surrounding world influences the outcomes of actions, and those independent influences can change greatly from moment to moment....When external influences change, organisms alter their actions to compensate.-Powers (1989, p. 25) Pausing to observe an undergraduate shuffle slowly from the laboratory, one may reasonably speculate on the reason for herlocomotive lassitude. Could it be that a wandering imagination, ill-fitting shoe, or ingrown toenail has reduced her walking speed to a veritable dawdle? Although This research was supported by a University of Canterbury Research Grant #2202086 to Lucy Johnston and a Visiting Erskine Fellowship to Neil Macrae. The authors thank Serena Butt for her assitance with this work. Thanks also to Jim Uleman, Dan Wegner, Ad van Knippenberg, Ap Dijksterhuis and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful and helpful comments.

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In three experiments, we investigated the spontaneous attention of perceivers to the nature of targets' facial expressions, specifically whether they were displaying an enjoyment or a non-enjoyment smile. Further, we investigated the social functions of sensitivity to smile type and the consequences of such sensitivity for subsequent interactions. Results demonstrated that perceivers did indeed spontaneously attend to smile type, especially in situations where issues of trust or cooperation were made salient. Further, this sensitivity had an impact both on the evaluations of the target individuals and the cooperative behaviour of individuals towards those displaying enjoyment and non-enjoyment smiles. Participants evaluated individuals displaying enjoyment smiles more positively than those displaying non-enjoyment smiles and had higher rates of cooperation with those displaying enjoyment smiles. These results are discussed in terms of the social functions of facial expressions.

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