Priming (psychology) - in Daily Life

In Daily Life

Priming is thought to play a large part in the systems of stereotyping. This is because attention to a response increases the frequency of that response, even if the attended response is undesired. The attention given to these response or behaviours primes them for later activation.

This can occur even if the subject is not conscious of the priming stimulus. An example of this was done by Bargh et al. in 1996. Subjects were implicitly primed with words related to the stereotype of elderly people (example: Florida, forgetful, wrinkle). While the words did not explicitly mention speed or slowness, those who were primed with these words walked more slowly upon exiting the testing booth than those who were primed with neutral stimuli. Similar effects were found with rude and polite stimuli: those primed with rude words were more likely to interrupt an investigator than those primed with neutral words, and those primed with polite words were the least likely to interrupt. A Yale study showed that something as simple as holding a hot or cold beverage before an interview could result in pleasant or negative opinion of the interviewer.

These findings have been extended to therapeutic interventions. For example, Cox etal (2012) suggest that presented with a depressed patient who "self-stereotypes herself as incompetent, a therapist can find ways to prime her with specific situations in which she had been competent in the past... Making memories of her competence more salient should reduce her self-stereotype of incompetence."

The replicability and interpretation of goal-priming findings has become controversial. Recent studies have failed to replicate finds, including age priming, with additional reports of failure to replicate this and other findings such as social-distance also reported,