I’m sure you have heard of subliminal messages. You know that classic story where it was alleged that flashing the words DRINK COKE on a movie screen for a fraction of a second would increase cola buying behavior at the concession stand.\u00a0 Well, that was a hoax, but you should know that I can, in other ways, tap into your subconscious thoughts and make you smarter, dumber, more assertive, or more passive for a short period of time.<\/p>\n
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This is not brainwashing!\u00a0 It has a different name.\u00a0 In the field of psychology, this interesting phenomena is referred to as priming<\/strong>.\u00a0 John Bargh<\/a> (now at Yale University) and colleagues formerly at New York University demonstrated the legitimacy of priming in a very interesting paper entitled Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action <\/em><\/a>(Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996).\u00a0 These researchers contend “that social behavior is often triggered automatically on the mere presence of relevant situational features <\/em>[and that] this behavior is unmediated by conscious perceptual or judgmental processes<\/em>.”\u00a0 One of the studies they used to empirically demonstrate the implications of automatic social behavior (priming) involved a group of undergraduates from NYU who were given the scrambled sentence test<\/em>.\u00a0 The test involves the presentation of a series of five scrambled word groupings.\u00a0 From each grouping one is to devise a grammatical four word sentence.\u00a0 For example, one of the groupings might include the words: blue<\/em> the from is sky<\/em>.\u00a0 From this grouping your job would be to write The sky is blue<\/em>.\u00a0 A typical scrambled sentence test takes about five minutes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The scrambled sentence test is a diversion and a means to present words that may influence or prime the subject’s behavior, thoughts, or capabilities.\u00a0 In this study the subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups.\u00a0 One group was presented with scrambled sentences that were sprinkled with words like “bold,” “intrude,” “bother,” “rude,” “infringe,” and “disturb.”\u00a0 The second group was presented with scrambled sentences containing words like “patiently,” “appreciate,” “yield,” “polite,” and “courteous.”\u00a0 Each student independently completed their test in one room and were told upon completion to walk down the hall to get their next task from an experimenter in another office.\u00a0 For every subject, however, there was another student (a stooge) at the experimenter’s office asking a series of questions forcing the subject to wait. \u00a0 Bargh and colleagues predicted that those primed with words like “rude” and “intrude” would interrupt the stooge and barge in quicker than those primed with words like “polite” and “yield.” \u00a0\u00a0 Bargh anticipated that the difference between the groups would be measured in milliseconds or at most, seconds.\u00a0 These were New Yorkers, after all, with a proclivity to be very assertive (Gladwell, 2005).\u00a0 The results were surprisingly quite dramatic!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those primed with the “rude” words interrupted after about 5 minutes.\u00a0 Interestingly, the university board responsible for approving experiments involving human subjects limited the wait period in the study to a maximum of ten minutes. The vast majority (82%) of those primed with the “polite” words never interrupted at all. \u00a0 It is unknown how long they would have waited.\u00a0 The difference between these groups based simply on the nature of the priming words was huge!\u00a0 In the same paper Bargh et al., (1996) presented how students primed with words denoting old age (e.g., worried, Florida, lonely, gray, bingo, forgetful) walked more slowly leaving the office after completing the scrambled sentence test than they did on their way to the testing office.\u00a0 It is suggested that the subjects mediated their behavior as a result of thoughts planted in their sub-conscious pertaining to being old.\u00a0 These thoughts, in this case, resulted in the subjects behaving older (e.g., walking more slowly).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Priming one to be more or less polite or sprite is interesting, but there are disturbing and perhaps very damaging implications of this phenomena.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg, a research team from Holland, looked at how priming might affect intellectual performance (1998).\u00a0 Their subjects were divided into two random groups.\u00a0 The first group was tasked for five minutes with thinking and writing down attributes pertaining to being a college professor.\u00a0 The second group was tasked with thinking about and listing the attributes of soccer hooligans.\u00a0 Following this thinking and writing task, the subjects were given 47 challenging questions from the board game Trivial Pursuits.\u00a0 Those in the “professorial” priming group got 55.6% of the items correct while those primed with soccer hooliganism got only 42.6% correct.\u00a0 One group was not smarter than the other – but it is contended that those in the “smart” frame of mind were better able to tap into their cognitive resources than those with a less erudite frame of mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And then there is the research from Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson (1995).\u00a0 These psychologists investigated the impact on African Americans of reporting one’s race before taking a very difficult test.\u00a0 They employed African American college students and a test made up of 20 questions from the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).\u00a0 The students were randomly split into two groups.\u00a0 One group had to indicate their race on the test while the others did not.\u00a0 Those who indicated their race got half as many of the GRE items correct as their non-race-reporting counterparts.\u00a0 Simply reporting that they were African American seemed to prime them for lower achievement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All of these effects were accomplished completely and totally outside the awareness of the involved parties.\u00a0 In fact, this is an essential attribute.\u00a0 Effective priming absolutely necessitates that it be done outside the subject’s awareness.\u00a0 Awareness negates the effect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Regardless, consider the implications, intended or otherwise of such priming.\u00a0 Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink<\/a><\/strong><\/em> notes: “The results from these experiments are, obviously quite disturbing.\u00a0 They suggest that what we think of as freewill is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.<\/em>” (p. 58).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, It is disturbing on a personal level with regard to the vulnerability of rational decision making, but I am more concerned about the ethical implications of our insight into this tool. Priming may be used by those with the power, influence, and intentions to manipulate outcomes to serve ideological purposes.\u00a0 On yet another level the reality of this phenomena supports my contention in Do we all get a fair start?<\/a> that there is no true equal starting point.\u00a0 Societal morays and the media in particular shape how we think about others and ourselves in profound ways.\u00a0 We all are susceptible to stereotypes, prejudices, and biases and these tendencies can cut in multiple directions.\u00a0 They can also be used to bolster negative attitudes or weaken individuals in destructive ways.\u00a0 I am not suggesting that the sky is falling or that there is a huge ideological conspiracy going on, but we must be aware of our vulnerabilities in this regard.\u00a0 And we must act to avoid constraining individuals as a function of subgroup affiliation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bargh, J. A., Chen, M.,\u00a0 & Burrows, L. (1996).\u00a0 Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action.<\/em><\/strong> <\/a> Journal of Personality and Social Psychology<\/span>. Vol. 71, No. 2. 230-244<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dijksterhuis, A., & van Knippenberg, A. (1998). The relation between perception and behavior or how to win a game of Trivial Pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology<\/span>, Vol. 74, 865-877.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gladwell, M. (2005).\u00a0 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong> Little, Brown and Company: New York.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n