Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Subjects are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. "Why do you like him?" "How did you solve this problem?" "Why did you take that job?" In our daily lives we answer many such questions about the cognitive processes underlying our choices, evaluations, judgments, and behavior. Sometimes such questions are asked by social scientists. For example, investigators have asked people why they like particular po-The writing of this paper, and some of the research described, was supported by grants GS-40085 and BNS75-23191 from the National Science Foundation. The authors are greatly indebted to Eugene Borgida, Michael Kruger, Lee Ross, Lydia Temoshok) and Amos Tversky for innumerable ideas and generous and constructive criticism.

Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Subjects are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. "Why do you like him?" "How did you solve this problem?" "Why did you take that job?" In our daily lives we answer many such questions about the cognitive processes underlying our choices, evaluations, judgments, and behavior. Sometimes such questions are asked by social scientists. For example, investigators have asked people why they like particular po-The writing of this paper, and some of the research described, was supported by grants GS-40085 and BNS75-23191 from the National Science Foundation. The authors are greatly indebted to Eugene Borgida, Michael Kruger, Lee Ross, Lydia Temoshok) and Amos Tversky for innumerable ideas and generous and constructive criticism.

When an attitude changes from A1 to A2, what happens to A1? Most theories assume, at least implicitly, that the new attitude replaces the former one. The authors argue that a new attitude can override, but not replace, the old one, resulting in dual attitudes. Dual attitudes are defined as different evaluations of the same attitude object: an automatic, implicit attitude and an explicit attitude. The attitude that people endorse depends on whether they have the cognitive capacity to retrieve the explicit attitude and whether this overrides their implicit attitude. A number of literatures consistent with these hypotheses are reviewed, and the implications of the dual-attitude model for attitude theory and measurement are discussed. For example, by including only explicit measures, previous studies may have exaggerated the ease with which people change their attitudes. Even if an explicit attitude changes, an implicit attitude can remain the same.

People are generally unaware of the operation of the system of cognitive mechanisms that ameliorate their experience of negative affect (the psychological immune system), and thus they tend to overestimate the duration of their affective reactions to negative events. This tendency was demonstrated in 6 studies in which participants overestimated the duration of their affective reactions to the dissolution of a romantic relationship, the failure to achieve tenure, an electoral defeat, negative personality feedback, an account of a child's death, and rejection by a prospective employer. Participants failed to distinguish between situations in which their psychological immune systems would and would not be likely to operate and mistakenly predicted overly and equally enduring affective reactions in both instances. The present experiments suggest that people neglect the psychological immune system when making affective forecasts. I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.

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