Priming effects in judgements and behaviour - research

Question 1

Ma and Cao (2017)

Answer 1

travel attitudes moderate the influences of perceptions on travel behaviour

Question 2

Kahn et al. (2019)

Answer 2

moral efficacy negatively mediates perceptions of organisational politics on organisational citizenship behaviour

Question 3

Haynes et al. (2017)

Answer 3

perception of being overweight led to increased likelihood of attempting weight loss

not reliably associated with PA or healthy eating

more likely to report attempting weight loss but actually gain weight

suggests not all perceptions lead to the correct behaviours

Question 4

Pappas et al. (2016)

Answer 4

cognitive and affective perceptions explain high intention to purchase

The findings support the need for online shopping environments to be more interactive in order to target customers’ cognitive and affective perceptions, and increase their intention to purchase.

Question 5

Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001)

Answer 5

perception essential to comprehend the environment - this doesn’t mean it is an end in itself

perception provides an understanding of the world

social perception generally has a direct effect on social behaviour

perceptual inputs are translated to behavioural outputs

Question 6

Brewer et al. (2007)

Answer 6

consistent relationships between risk perceptions and behaviour - e.g. likelihood of vaccination

Question 7

Pretegiani et al. (2019)

Answer 7

increased basal ganglia inhibitory output to the intermediate layer of the superior colliculus disrupted the normal coupling of perception and action

couples through the modulation of attention - suggests attention is necessary

Question 8

Hommel (2019)

Answer 8

Theory of Event Coding (TEC) - claims perception and action are identical processes

Question 9

McNeill et al. (2019)

Answer 9

Motor Simulation and Performance Model

Simulating (MS) and imagining (MI) an action leads to better performance - same activation in the brain

Question 10

Lebon et al. (2018)

Answer 10

MI has overlap with the processes involved in the actual movement

excitability increased in the muscle during the real and imagined movement

inhibition occurred in preparation for the real and imagined movement

Question 11

Monier et al. (2019)

Answer 11

synchronised action during learning (of a rhythmic interval in children) benefitted performance

especially for the younger children

Question 12

Mathias et al. (2019)

Answer 12

pianists hearing a note soon to be played

interference from perception of near future information negatively affected performance more than far-future information

Question 13

Bos et al. (2016)

Answer 13

imitation of facial expressions is an automatic process but is modulated by contextual information

imitation may depend on the behaviour being displayed during imitation - e.g. child more likely to imitate angry expressions if displaying negative behaviour

Question 14

Jones (2012)

Answer 14

inherit neural mechanism to imitate

no imitation before the age of 2 - demonstrated developmental progression

imitation is a complex system

Question 15

Unnerstall (2019)

Answer 15

primes ability to impact implicit associations - not consistent across studies

didn’t influence behaviour

reward was driver for how they behaved

Question 16

Willard et al. (2016)

Answer 16

A recent meta-analysis found religious priming only effects religious believers.

Meta-analytic results found religious priming reliably increases prosocial behavior.

More work is needed to evaluate the robustness of these effects across contexts.

Question 17

Shariff et al. (2015)

Answer 17

reliability of religious priming questioned

robust effects across a variety of outcome measures

doesn’t affect non-religious - relies on culturally transmitted beliefs

Question 18

O’Carroll et al. (2019)

Answer 18

Methods Four hundred twenty participants (223 females) from England and Scotland aged 18+ who were not currently registered organ donors were randomized by block allocation using a 1:1 ratio to receive either a reciprocity prime or control message. After manipulation, they were asked to indicate their organ donation intentions and whether or not they would like to be taken to an organ donation registration and information page.

Results In line with our previous work, participants primed with a reciprocity statement reported greater intent to register as an organ donor than controls (using a 7-point Likert scale where higher scores = greater intention; prime mean [SD] = 4.3 [1.6] vs. control mean [SD] = 3.7 [1.4], p <= .001, d = 0.4 [95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.21-0.59]). There was again however, no effect on behavior as rates of participants agreeing to receive the donation register web-link were comparable between those primed at 11% (n = 23/210) (95% CI = 7.4-16.0) and controls at 12% (n = 25/210) (95% CI = 8.1-17.1), X-2 (1) = 0.09, p = .759.

Conclusions Reciprocal altruism appears useful for increasing intention towards joining the organ donation register. It does not, however, appear to increase organ donor behavior.

Question 19

Zawadzka et al. (2019)

Answer 19

effects of materialistic social models on materialistic life aspirations

activation increased importance placed on financial success and image

didn’t affect non-materialistic

Question 20

Shimoni et al. (2019)

Answer 20

Distinct positive emotions signal adherence to specific goals: pride signals the successful pursuit of long-term goals, while joy signals the successful pursuit of immediate desires. We propose that when children are primed with a positive emotion, without actually feeling it, they are likely to pursue the goal that evokes it. Because delaying gratification involves resisting an immediate desire for the sake of a long-term goal, we predicted that, when primed with pride, children would delay gratification more often than when primed with joy. We tested 8-year-olds’ ability to delay gratification, using a delay-discounting task. We primed pride/joy by having children either imagine a future emotional event (Experiment 1) or listen to another child’s emotional experience (Experiment 2). As predicted, pride-primed children showed lower delay discounting than children who were primed with joy and the control condition, demonstrating enhanced self-regulation. These results suggest that, from a young age, simply thinking about an emotion without actually experiencing it may cue pursuit of associated goals.

Question 21

Orghian et al. (2018)

Answer 21

Spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) occur when people infer, without intention or awareness, personality traits from other people’s behaviors. Spontaneous trait transferences (STTs) occur when the trait inferred from the behavior of an actor is erroneously transferred to a person who is not the actor of the behavior. Here, we show that STIs and STTs are similar in the activation of the trait from the behavior and they differ in the link that is established between the inferred trait and the person, with stronger link being created in the STIs than in STTs.

Question 22

Shimizu (2000)

Answer 22

The present study examined whether 3- to 6-year-old children understand trait-motive-behavior causality, and whether they know that traits cause behaviors over situations. Children listened to stories each of which included a motive, behavior, and an outcome. They then labeled the main character’s chief trait, and predicted the character’s behavior in a different context. The results showed that 3- and 4-year-olds understood trait-motive-behavior causality, but their understanding was not as complete as that of 5-and 6-year-olds. Children over the age of 5 understood that traits cause behaviors over situations, but only the fi-year-olds in the present study understood this completely. It was also suggested that a recency effect was observed in these young children’s trait inference.

Question 23

Dijksterhuis et al. (2001)

Answer 23

Factors influencing the tendency to represent a social stimulus primarily in stereotypic terms, or more as a distinct exemplar, were predicted to moderate automatic behavior effects, producing assimilation and contrast respectively. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that when an impression pertained to a group of elderly people it led to behavioral assimilation to the stereotype (i.e., slower response latencies) and to contrast when identical information pertained to an individual exemplar. In Experiment 2, an impression of a single individual led to behavioral contrast under normal circumstances but to behavioral assimilation under cognitive load. Experiment 3 demonstrated that while a group impression led to assimilation under normal conditions, this effect was eliminated under conditions of accuracy motivation. Conditions that fostered assimilation were characterized by more stereotypical impressions of the stimulus target(s) compared to conditions that fostered contrast. Implications for automatic behavior are discussed.

Question 24

Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998)

Answer 24

The authors tested and confirmed the hypothesis that priming a stereotype or trait leads to complex
overt behavior in line with this activated stereotype or trait. Specifically, 4 experiments established
that priming the stereotype of professors or the trait intelligent enhanced participants’ performance
on a scale measuring general knowledge. Also, priming the stereotype of soccer hooligans or the
trait stupid reduced participants’ performance on a general knowledge scale. Results of the experiments revealed (a) that prolonged priming leads to more pronounced behavioral effects and (b) that
there is no sign of decay of the effects for at least 15 min. The authors explain their results by
claiming that perception has a direct and pervasive impact on overt behavior (cf. J. A. Bargh, M.
Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996). Implications for human social behavior are discussed.

Question 25

Marhenke and Imhoff (2019)

Answer 25

Increasingly remote concepts and behaviors have been primed, which have come under increasing criticism. In this present experiment, we take a step back and try to strengthen the roots of priming research. In this experiment, we systematically varied the activation or priming of a concept in six experiments (N = 1285). We then measured accessibility for semantic concepts using a word stem completion task. Across the six experiments, our investigations showed that the activation of semantic concepts is possible through greater accessibility of semantically congruent words (with only one experiment failing to reach a conventional level of significance). These results provide a prerequisite for further investigation into behavioral priming. The present experiment showed that the basal priming mechanisms are robust effects. The meta-analytic integration showed that women reliably had access to more baby-related words. A possible explanation is that social role stereotypes associate women more with the reproductive sphere than men and that women, to a certain extent, internalize these societal views. Other explanations and potential future applications are discussed.

Question 26

O'Donnell et al. (2018)

Answer 26

Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with a category associated with intelligence (“professor”) subsequently performed 13% better on a trivia test than participants primed with a category associated with a lack of intelligence (“soccer hooligans”). In two unpublished replications of this study designed to verify the appropriate testing procedures, Dijksterhuis, van Knippenberg, and Holland observed a smaller difference between conditions (2%–3%) as well as a gender difference: Men showed the effect (9.3% and 7.6%), but women did not (0.3% and −0.3%). The procedure used in those replications served as the basis for this multilab Registered Replication Report. A total of 40 laboratories collected data for this project, and 23 of these laboratories met all inclusion criteria. Here we report the meta-analytic results for those 23 direct replications (total N = 4,493), which tested whether performance on a 30-item general-knowledge trivia task differed between these two priming conditions (results of supplementary analyses of the data from all 40 labs, N = 6,454, are also reported). We observed no overall difference in trivia performance between participants primed with the “professor” category and those primed with the “hooligan” category (0.14%) and no moderation by gender.

Question 27

Dijksterhuis et al. (2000)

Answer 27

In two experiments the relation between past contact, stereotypic associative strength, and stereotype activation effects on memory performance was investigated. It was hypothesized that, for some stereotypes, contact can lead to the development of stronger stereotypical associations. Associative strength, in turn, was expected to determine stereotype activation effects on behavior (in this case, memory performance). In Experiment 1, it was shown that people who reported to have had much previous contact with elderly people performed worse on a memory (free recall) test after being primed with the stereotype of the elderly. People who reported to have had little previous contact did not show any effects of priming. In Experiment 2, we confirmed that this effect is mediated by associative strength. People who reported to have had a lot of contact with the elderly had developed an association between the category elderly and the attribute “forgetfulness.” The strength of this association, in turn, predicted the degree of memory impairment after activation of the category elderly.

Question 28

Furley and Memmert (2018)

Answer 28

Method Using a sequential priming procedure amateur soccer players were primed with either creative (Lionel Messi; Thiago Alcántara) or uncreative soccer players (Per Mertesacker; John Terry) and subsequently performed a soccer decision-making task. The priming stimuli were changed from Experiment 1 (N = 60) to Experiment 2 (N = 60), and the priming procedure was changed in Experiment 3 (N = 60). Results All three experiments revealed large (d = 0.91 in Experiment 1 and d = 1.75 in Experiment 2) to moderate effects (Experiment 3; d = 0.59) of priming on creative decision making in soccer. Conclusion Domain-specific creative thinking can be influenced by priming amateur soccer players with soccer stars that are known to differ in terms of creativity. Both the practical implications of the findings for soccer and the methodological implications for future priming research in sport are critically discussed.

Question 29

Chan and Yanos (2018)

Answer 29

Research has consistently noted that news reports on mental illness are biased toward describing violent incidents, and there is evidence that the media is a significant source contributing to the public’s knowledge about mental illness (Jorm, 2000). However, it is unclear whether and how the media’s bias toward reporting violent incidents impacts one’s assumptions about the association between mental illness and violence. Based on pragmatic inference, we hypothesized that people remember information that is not explicitly stated but plausibly implied from articles (Brewer, 1977). Thus, the mention of mental illness in articles describing violent incidents would lead people to infer a causal link between the two. In an online study (n = 172), participants were randomly assigned to identical descriptions of a violent incident, manipulating whether mental illness was mentioned, and memory of presented information was measured. We also examined the potential moderating impact of cognitive styles and preexisting attitudes and beliefs. Results strongly supported that priming people about mental illness leads them to believe that mental illness was related to a violent incident, and that pragmatic inference underlies laypeople’s processing of news reports. There was no evidence for moderating effects of individual difference variables in this process.

Question 30

Lee and Lee (2019)

Answer 30

This study examined priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of Korean older adults. Age stereotypes refer to general beliefs about older adults. Through a priming task, older participants were briefly exposed to positive or negative age stereotypes without awareness. Before and after the priming task, free-recall tasks were given to participants to measure their memory performance. Changes in performance caused by the priming task were estimated as priming effects of age stereotypes. Participants showed better memory performance after they were exposed to positive stereotypes during the priming task (positive priming effects). In contrast, participants showed worse memory performance after they were exposed to negative age stereotypes during the priming task (negative priming effects). The magnitude of priming effects was similar in positive and negative stereotypes. This result suggests that the implicit activation of age stereotypes can change memory of Korean elderly in both positive and negative ways.

Question 31

Kidder et al. (2018)

Answer 31

Psychological interest in stereotype measurement has spanned nearly a century, with researchers adopting implicit measures in the 1980s to complement explicit measures. One of the most frequently used implicit measures of stereotypes is the sequential priming paradigm. The current meta-analysis examines stereotype priming, focusing specifically on this paradigm. To contribute to ongoing discussions regarding methodological rigor in social psychology, one primary goal was to identify methodological moderators of the stereotype priming effectwhether priming is due to a relation between the prime and target stimuli, the prime and target response, participant task, stereotype dimension, stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), and stimuli type. Data from 39 studies yielded 87 individual effect sizes from 5,497 participants. Analyses revealed that stereotype priming is significantly moderated by the presence of prime-response relations, participant task, stereotype dimension, target stimulus type, SOA, and prime repetition. These results carry both practical and theoretical implications for future research on stereotype priming.

Question 32

White et al. (2018)

Answer 32

The current research examined potential moderators of gender and racial stereotype priming in sequential priming paradigms. Results from five experiments suggest that stereotype priming effects are more consistent in tasks that elicit both semantic priming and response competition (i.e., response priming paradigms) rather than tasks that evoke semantic priming alone (i.e., semantic priming paradigms). Recommendations for future stereotype priming research and the implication of these results for the proper interpretation of stereotype priming effects are discussed.

Question 33

Bock and Akpinar (2016)

Answer 33

Previous research suggests that older persons show cognitive deficits in standardized laboratory tests, but not in more natural tests such as the Multiple Errands Task (MET). The absence of deficits in the latter tests has been attributed to the compensation of deficits by strategies based on life-long experience. To scrutinize this view, we primed older participants with positive or negative stereotypes about old age before administering MET. We found that compared to unprimed controls, priming with positive age stereotypes reduced the number of errors without changing response times, while priming with negative stereotypes changed neither errors not response times. We interpret our findings as evidence that positive age priming improved participants' cognitive functions while leaving intact their experience-based compensation, and that negative age priming degraded participants' cognitive functions which, however, was balanced by an even stronger experience-based compensation.