The emergence of action.

People sometimes find themselves doing things that they did not set out to do. The theory of action identification suggests that people will make such discoveries under certain circumstances and then will continue to perform the action as newly understood; new action, then, will be the result. This action emergence phenomenon was investigated in two experiments. Each was designed to test the idea that people would embrace a new understanding of action—an emergent act identity—to the degree that this identity provided a more comprehensive understanding of the action than did a previous act identity. In Experiment 1, some subjects were induced to think about the details of the act of going to college (e.g., studying), whereas others were led to focus on more comprehensive meanings (e.g., preparing for a career). Those who concentrated on details were more susceptible to an emergent understanding of the act. They came to agree with an article that suggested that going to college results in improving one's sex life or impairing one's sex life. Experiment 2 revealed that emergent identification can be translated into emergent action. Subjects in this study who were induced to think about the details of coffee—by drinking their in unwieldy cups—were more susceptible than those who drank from normal cups to a suggested action identification. They came to believe that coffee amounts to making myself seek stimulation or to making myself avoid stimulation, and subsequently followed the suggested action identification by turning up or down the volume of music they were hearing.