Abstract Observations that people process nominally task-irrelevant information are commonly taken to demonstrate automaticity, an inability to avoid involuntary processing. However, it has been argued that this interpretation rests on an overly narrow view of people's active goals, which are not restricted to the goal reflecting the current task but also comprise other temporary and chronic goals. This suggests that nominally task-irrelevant stimuli are processed because they satisfy other concurrently active goals, such as curiosity: the chronic drive to reduce uncertainty. We tested this possibility in two experiments by comparing standard flanker and Simon tasks with otherwise identical task versions in which the irrelevant stimuli were perfectly predictable. The compatibility effects produced by the irrelevant stimuli were reduced by 50% or more. A third experiment did or did not arouse curiosity in a flanker task by blurring the flankers in some (not analyzed) trials. As predicted, the flanker compatibility effect was increased in the group with occasionally blurred flankers. Taken altogether, these findings suggest that nominally task-irrelevant stimuli are processed not because their processing cannot be prevented but because processing them satisfies curiosity and thus meets a chronic goal of perceivers/actors.
Hommel et al. (2026) studied this question.