Premature cognitive commitment.

Two experiments examined the effect that the conditions of initial exposure to information have on the "mindless" processing of that information and its subsequent use. It was hypothesized that the context of initial exposure to information limits its subsequent use. Information initially perceived as irrelevant may be uncritically accepted. If that information later becomes relevant, persons become victims of their premature cognitive commitments. In the first experiment, all subjects received information about perceptual deficits while the perceived relevance of that information was manipulated. On assessment tests, all subjects "found" they had this deficit. On follow-up perceptual tasks, the group initially informed that the deficit was seemingly irrelevant showed severe performance decrements relative to other groups. The second experiment used a similar procedure for a perceptual skill rather than a deficit. Here, subjects initially exposed to "irrelevant" information performed more productively than subjects initially exposed to "relevant" information. These results indicate that conditions surrounding initial exposure to information limit its subsequent use. The implications of these data for social, psychological, and physical symptoms are discussed.