The Politics of Selection: Towards a Transformative Model of Environmental Innovation

As a purposive sustainability transition requires environmental innovation and innovation policy, we discuss potentials and limitations of three dominant strands of literature in this field, namely the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP), the innovation systems approach (IS), and the long-wave theory of techno-economic paradigm shifts (LWT). All three are epistemologically rooted in an evolutionary understanding of socio-technical change. While these approaches are appropriate to understand market-driven processes of change, they may be deficient as analytical tools for exploring and designing processes of purposive societal transformation. In particular, we argue that the evolutionary mechanism of selection is the key to introducing the strong directionality required for purposive transformative change. In all three innovation theories, we find that the prime selection environment is constituted by the market and, thus, normative societal goals like sustainability are sidelined. Consequently, selection is depoliticised and neither strong directionality nor incumbent regime destabilisation are societally steered. Finally, we offer an analytical framework that builds upon a more political conception of selection and retention and calls for new political institutions to make normatively guided selections. Institutions for transformative innovation need to improve the capacities of complex societies to make binding decisions in politically contested fields.

Controlled Processing in Single-Prime Negative Priming

Negative priming refers to delayed responses to previously ignored distractors. Unlike conventional studies of negative priming in which the attentional selection of a target against its distractors is required in prime trials (prime-selection negative priming), in single-prime negative priming, a prime stimulus is presented briefly. To further investigate the nature of single-prime negative priming, its properties were examined. In Experiment 1, the proportion of repetition was varied. The effect of single-prime negative priming was reduced when the proportion of repetition was high. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that high memory load could hamper the single-prime negative priming effect. Overall, the current study indicates controlled processing in single-prime negative priming and similarities between single-prime negative priming and prime-selection negative priming.

Negative Priming as a Memory Phenomenon

Reactions to recently ignored stimuli are slowed down or more error prone when compared to reactions to control stimuli. This so-called negative priming effect has been traditionally investigated in the area of selective attention. More recent theory developments conceptualize the negative priming effect as a memory phenomenon. This review presents four models to explain the phenomenon as well as their essential empirical evidence. The review also considers several negative priming characteristics - that is stimulus modality, prime selection and prime response requirement, probe interference, stimulus repetition, aging and thought disorders, and physiological correlates. On these bases, it is concluded that only the distractor inhibition and the episodic retrieval models have survived empirical testing so far. Whereas evidence has increased that negative priming clearly obeys memory retrieval principles, the distractor inhibition model has lost much of its persuasiveness within recent years.