Priming Effects

The combined effects of stable perceiver differences and fluc- tuating mood states point to an important conclusion: To some extent, impression formation is in the eye of the beholder. The characteristics we tend to see in other people also change from time to time, depending on recent experiences. Have you ever noticed that once a seldom-used word slips into a conversation or appears on a blog, it is often repeated over and over again? If so, then you have observed priming, the tendency for frequently or recently used concepts to come to mind easily and influence the way we interpret new information.

Our motivations and behaviors are also subject to the automatic effects of priming even without awareness. In one provocative study, John Bargh and Tanya Chartrand (1999) gave participants a “word search” puzzle that contained either neutral words or words associated with achievement motivation (strive, win, master, compete, succeed). Afterward, the participants were left alone and given 3 minutes to write down as many words as they could form from a set of Scrabble letter tiles. When the 3-minute limit was up, they were signaled over an intercom to stop. Did these participants, who were driven to obtain a high score, stop on cue or continue to write? Through the use of hidden cameras, the experimenters observed that 57% of those primed with achievement-related words continued to write after the stop signal, compared to only 22% in the control group.