Perception Without Awareness:

This landmark volume brings together the work of the world's leading researchers in sublimated perception. This compilation marks a fundamental shift in the current study of subliminal effects: No longer in question is the notion that perception without awareness occurs. Now, the emphasis is on elucidating the parameters of subliminal effects and understanding the conditions under which stimuli perceived without awareness significantly influence affect, cognition, and behavior. PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS firmly establishes subliminal perception within the mainstream of psychological science. Well represented here are the two main research branches that have emerged: One directly investigates the nature of subliminal effects; the other uses subliminal techniques as tools for investigating psychological phenomena such as hypnosis, dreaming, repression, social judgment and inference, psychopathology, and symptom formation. Broadly grouped into three main sections, the contributed chapters explore * The cognitive perspective--including implicit memory and implicit perception, the measurement of unconscious perceptual processes, and methods for revealing unconscious processes * The clinical perspective--exploring the cognitive and dynamic aspects of subliminal perception, memory, and consciousness; direct recovery of subliminal stimuli; and validation of subliminal psychodynamic activation * The social perspective--discussing subliminal mere-exposure effects, affect and social perception, and the role of subliminality in social psychology Timely and thought-provoking, PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS is sure to be of enormous interest to all psychoanalytic clinicians and scholars, as well as cognitive, clinical, and social psychologists whose work touches upon issues relating to psychopathology, perception, cognition, and memory.

About the Author :
Robert F. Bornstein received his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1986. He is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at Gettysburg College. Dr. Bornstein has published numerous articles on perception without awareness, as well as on the antecedents, dynamics, and correlates of dependent personality traits. He is the author of The Dependent Personality, a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on dependency, which will be published by Guilford Press in 1993. Thane S. Pittman received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Iowa in 1972. He is currently Professor and Chair of Psychology at Gettysburg College. Dr. Pittman has published widely on the aspects of human social motivation, including research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, control motivation, and attitude change processes. He is coauthor (with Ann Boggiano) of Achievement Motivation: A Socio-Developmental Perspective, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 1993.

Review :
"A valuable contribution to our understandingg of brain/mind relationships in cognitive processes. It should be required reading for all those who still believe that we are only affected by stimuli of which we are conscious." --N. F. Dixon in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease [This book] simultaneously presents us with a wealth of scholarly information concerning what is really known about subliminal perception and a good old fashioned dramatic story about a scholarly community struggling to come to terms with observations threatening some of their favorite values and theories. In every chapter, we witness the interaction between the purely cognitive and personal sides of doing science. Happily, we also witness the power of persistence, deep curiosity, and sharp intellect to bring reasonable meaning to a major area of psychological research.'' --Seymour Fisher, Ph.D. "Bornstein and Pittman's volume provides an inside view of the ongoing explosion of research on unconscious cognition. The editors' decision to mix cognitive, clinical, and social perspectives effectively displays the breadth of recent work, and establishes that these diverse perspectives can and do communicate with one another. The selected contributors are outstanding among active researchers, and their chapters capture recent and influential work while it is still very fresh." --Tony Greenwald, Ph.D. "The papers included in this volume are well written and historically comprehensive. As such, some could serve as an interesting review chapter for a seminar session on the influence of implicit perception on subjective or social judgment (e.g., Jacoby et al., Bargh). For those considering conducting research relying on subliminal material or implicit perception, the Kihlstrom et al., Merikle and Reingold, and Jacoby et al. chapters would be relevant. For those wishing to find a few interesting ideas, the Pittman chapter is quite good." --"Journal of Marketing Research" "From a developmental perspective, there is excellent evidence that experiences out of awareness are determinants of future behavior, including complex motor activities. The painstakingly thorough documentation by Engel et al. of the influence of the experience of the parent as an infant on infant feeding behavior (2) is one such example...This volume is a useful summary of a particular type of interest..." --"American Journal of Psychiatry" ., ."A careful reading of this literature, including many of the chapters in this book, however, indicate not only the capabilities of the unconscious, but also its limits." --"Psychoanalytic Books" "the book will surely educate interested readers....it is the right level to serve as the starting point for a more in-depth treatment of lexical processing (e.g., of the graduate seminar variety.) Conversely, it would do well as the mental lexicon half of a seminar on reading and the mental lexicon." --"Contemporary Psychology" "Thebook has valuable implications for the psychotherapist who can gain insights as to how we attend to data, our interpretations, and processing of information. The hypnotherapist will also glean valuable insight related to the how of unconscious perception and encoding of material." --"Journal of Clinical Hypnosis" "The papers included in this volume are well written and historically comprehensive. As such, some could serve as an interesting review chapter for a seminar session on the influence of implicit perception on subjective or social judgment (e.g., Jacoby et al., Bargh). For those considering conducting research relying on subliminal material or implicit perception, the Kihlstrom et al., Merikle and Reingold, and Jacoby et al. chapters would be relevant. For those wishing to find a few interesting ideas, the Pittman chapter is quite good." -- Journal of Marketing Research "From a developmental perspective, there is excellent evidence that experiences out of awareness are determinants of future behavior, including complex motor activities. The painstakingly thorough documentation by Engel et al. of the influence of the experience of the parent as an infant on infant feeding behavior (2) is one such example...This volume is a useful summary of a particular type of interest..." -- American Journal of Psychiatry , .."A careful reading of this literature, including many of the chapters in this book, however, indicate not only the capabilities of the unconscious, but also its limits." -- Psychoanalytic Books "the book will surely educate interested readers....it is the right level to serve as the starting point for a more in-depth treatment of lexical processing (e.g., of the graduate seminar variety.) Conversely, it would do well as the mental lexicon half of a seminar on reading and the mental lexicon." -- Contemporary Psychology "Thebook has valuable implications for the psychotherapist who can gain insights as to how we attend to data, our interpretations, and processing of information. The hypnotherapist will also glean valuable insight related to the how of unconscious perception and encoding of material." -- Journal of Clinical Hypnosis "The papers included in this volume are well written and historically comprehensive. As such, some could serve as an interesting review chapter for a seminar session on the influence of implicit perception on subjective or social judgment (e.g., Jacoby et al., Bargh). For those considering conducting research relying on subliminal material or implicit perception, the Kihlstrom et al., Merikle and Reingold, and Jacoby et al. chapters would be relevant. For those wishing to find a few interesting ideas, the Pittman chapter is quite good." --"Journal of Marketing Research" "From a developmental perspective, there is excellent evidence that experiences out of awareness are determinants of future behavior, including complex motor activities. The painstakingly thorough documentation by Engel et al. of the influence of the experience of the parent as an infant on infant feeding behavior (2) is one such example...This volume is a useful summary of a particular type of interest..." --"American Journal of Psychiatry" .,."A careful reading of this literature, including many of the chapters in this book, however, indicate not only the capabilities of the unconscious, but also its limits." --"Psychoanalytic Books" "the book will surely educate interested readers....it is the right level to serve as the starting point for a more in-depth treatment of lexical processing (e.g., of the graduate seminar variety.) Conversely, it would do well as the mental lexicon half of a seminar on reading and the mental lexicon." --"Contemporary Psychology" "The book has valuable implications for the psychotherapist who can gain insights as to how we attend to data, our interpretations, and processingof information. The hypnotherapist will also glean valuable insight related to the how of unconscious perception and encoding of material." --"Journal of Clinical Hypnosis"