The Effect of Priming on Perception
There have been numerous studies done on how priming affects one’s judgments and attitudes. One typical priming experiment involves memorizing a long list of words and then having to complete word fragments. In this type of experiment, the subject is first asked to memorize a long list of words which may include the words between and independence. The subject is then given a few word fragments to complete, which may include b_ t_ _ _n and i_ _ _ p_nd_ _c_ . The experimenter does not ask the subjects to recall the list of words, but the fact that they were exposed to the words (known as primes in this case) between and independent turned out to influence their completion of the word fragments. The results of another study showed that priming a social category can influence people’s attitudes toward that particular group. In this study, people who were primed with the elderly category displayed more conservative attitudes, whereas those primed with the skinhead category expressed more prejudice (Dijksterhuis, Dovidio & Kawakami, 2003). According to a study by Koomen and Stapel, people primed with friendly exemplars, rated “Donald,” an ambiguous person, more positively. On the other hand, those primed with hostile exemplars rated Donald more negatively (1997).
One of the most popular studies on priming was conducted by Higgins, Rholes, and Jones. The subjects were told that they would be participants in two distinct and separate studies. In the first study, they were instructed to memorize a list of words. One experimental group was given a list of positive words such as self-confident, persistent, adventurous, and independent. The other experimental group was given a list of negative words that included the words reckless, aloof, conceited, and stubborn. In the supposed second study, the subjects were asked to read a paragraph about a person named Donald and then give their opinions about him. The paragraph described Donald as a person who has “climbed Mt. McKinley, shot the Colorado Rapids in a kayak, driven in a demolition derby, and piloted a jet-powered boat.” It also imparted that he did not have much experience in any of these activities, but managed to carry out these activities with some injuries. The paragraph also makes known that Donald has very few friends and that almost every decision he makes is final and cannot be changed. The results of the study showed that the subjects who memorized the positive words perceived Donald more positively while those who memorized the negative words perceived him more negatively. In replications of the study, Higgins and his colleagues had found that subjects still gave accurate opinions of Donald when they had to memorize words that did not apply to Donald. This study suggests that in order for the priming process to occur, perceptions must be accurate and easily brought to mind (as cited in Akert, Aronson & Wilson, 2005).
Method
The present study attempted to replicate the study by Higgins and his colleagues with a few variations. The hypothesis is that exposure to positive primes would elicit more positive evaluations whereas exposure to negative primes would elicit more negative evaluations. A mix of positive and negative primes, on the other hand, is expected to elicit mixed evaluations. The independent variable was the type of primes each participant was exposed to (either positive, negative, or neutral), and the dependent variable is the participants’ evaluation of an ambiguous figure named Tom. The study begins with the participants being exposed to either positive, negative, or mixed primes. They were then shown a somewhat ambiguous video that lacks sound. At the conclusion of the study they were asked to answer a questionnaire asking them about how they feel toward the character in the video.
Participants
The participants of this study are 210 ninth-grade students from Lowell High School. Since all the participants were under eighteen years of age, they were required to obtain signed permission from their parents prior to their participation in this study. The participants were recruited through their respective English classes, which offered them extra course credit for participation in this study. These students have not taken introductory psychology classes because of their young ages, and thus, were recruited for this study to keep the objectives of the study concealed. Among them, 100 were male (48%) and 110 were females (52%). Their ages range from thirteen to fifteen, with 25 at thirteen years old (12%), 160 at fourteen years old (76%), and 25 at fifteen years old (12%). The ethnic breakdown was as follows: 100 Caucasians (47%), 60 Asians (29%), 35 Hispanics (17%), 12 African-Americans (6%), and 3 American Indians (1%). All the demographics were obtained through a questionnaire that asked about the participant’s background: such as age, ethnicity, and gender. The background questionnaire was administered to (and returned by) the participants by their respective English teachers upon registering the participants into the study.
Procedure
The entire study was conducted in one day on UMASS Lowell premises and lasted for about one hour. Before the study begins, all the participants and experimenters were gathered in one location, the UMASS Lowell Auditorium. There the participants were told that the purpose of the study is to examine the relationships between vocabulary and sound. The participants were each given a slip of paper that read “1”, “2”, or “3.” These numbers determined which group each participant was assigned to: 1 being the control group, 2- the positive prime group, and 3- the negative prime group. The number each participant was given depended on their order of application. Upon signing up for the study, the participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. People applying as participant(s) number 1, 4, 7, 10, and so on were assigned to the control group or neutral prime group. People applying as participants number 2, 5, 8, 11, and so on were assigned to the positive prime experimental group. Those in the negative prime experimental group had application numbers 3, 6, 9, 12, and so on. The participants were then instructed to go to certain rooms depending on the number that they were given.
There were 70 participants and 9 experimenters in this study, with three experimenters for each group. Each group was assigned to a separate room in the UMASS Lowell Media Center. Each room was the same size and had the same lighting and electrical equipment. All the groups received the same instructions from their respective experimenters. The only thing that was different is the nature of the prime that each group was exposed to.
All the groups followed the following procedure. First, the participants were shown a list of five words from a large screen for three minutes. The control group was exposed to a mix of positive and negative words in this order: brave, obsessive, romantic, outcast, and shy. The positive prime group received positive words in this order: persistent, romantic, shy, brave, and gentleman. The negative prime group was exposed to negative words in the following order: obsessive, stalker, antisocial, coward, and outcast. The participants were then told that they will be shown a video that lacks sound. They were told that the main characters in the video are Tom, an awkward looking sixteen year old boy who wears glasses, and Linda, a pretty and popular sixteen year old girl. The video was then shown and is about 5 minutes long. It basically follows the following scenario. The video starts off with Tom talking to his best friend who is a male. The two boys are in the hallway and standing in front of Tom’s locker. Suddenly, Linda walks by with five other people. Tom stares at Linda admiringly while Linda does not even notice that Tom is staring at her.
She is smiling and laughing with her friends. In the next scene Tom is sitting in his room, smiling and looking at his collection of Linda’s pictures, most of which are from the school’s newspapers. He is still smiling and receiving a flashback of his recent encounter with Linda (when he was staring at her and she was walking with her five friends down the hallway). The next scenes show Tom driving by a house (which is Linda’s house) morning, day, and night for a few days. Linda is inside her bedroom in a few of the scenes and outside in some, other times she was not even home. The next scene shows Tom calling a flower shop. In the final scene, Tom is in class and the teacher is lecturing, when a man comes from the flower shop and announces that there is a delivery for Linda. Linda raises her hand and receives her flowers. She shows astonishment and delight while Tom is smiling and staring at her. Following the video, the participants were given a questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaire was based on a Likert Scale (with 1 representing strongly agree, 2- agree, 3- neutral, 4- disagree, and 5- strongly disagree) and asked the participants to rate the extent to which Tom possesses certain qualities. There are ten statements, all of which are phrased in a declarative manner (for example: “Tom is obsessive”). Some words also included in the questionnaire are: persistent, stalker, coward, outcast, and romantic.
Results
The results of the questionnaire were calculated using a system of points. For every statement with a positive quality mentioned in it (persistent, brave, romantic and gentleman) the points are as follows: 1-strongly agree = 1 point, 2-agree =2 points, 3- neutral= 3 points,4-disagree= 4 points, and 5-strongly disagree= 5 points. The statements with negative qualities (obsessive, antisocial, coward, and outcast) were scored in this manner: 1-strongly agree= 5 points, 2-agree= 4 points, 3-neutral =3 points, 4- disagree= 2 points, and 5-strongly disagree= 1 point. The points were added for all the statements and the total number of points is calculated. The total number of points for each participant was used to find out if the participant had an overall positive, negative, or neutral evaluation of Tom. The scoring system is: 10 to 25 points=positive, 26 to 40 points= neutral, and 41 to 50 points= negative.
The results support the hypothesis that I have put forth. The results show that most of the people in the positive prime group evaluated Tom more positively, while those in the negative prime condition evaluated Tom more negatively. In the positive prime condition, about 84% (n=59) of the participants rated Tom positively, especially for the qualities: romantic, gentleman, and persistent. About 87% (n=61) of those in the negative prime group rated Tom negatively, especially in the qualities: obsessive, coward, antisocial, and outcast. However, the people in the neutral condition evaluated Tom with mixed feelings, with about a third evaluating positively, the other third evaluating him negatively, and the last third evaluating him neutrally.
Discussion
The present study had several strengths. First of all, it is high in internal validity. I, the experimenter had a lot of control in conducting this experiment. Random assignment was one of the factors that allowed for a high level control in this study. Using random assignment, the personality and background differences among the participants were able to be spread out, therefore allowing people of various genders, ethnicities, and ages to be in each condition. In addition, everything in the study was constant except for the independent variable (the type of primes each group was exposed to: positive, negative, or mixed). Among the things that were kept constant in the study were the electrical equipment, questions on the questionnaire, room size, lighting in the room, instructions for participants, and scoring system.
Although the results support my hypothesis, there are several weaknesses in this study.
First of all, the participants in the study may have expressed demand characteristics and performed to the expectations of the experimenters. Some of the participants may have wanted to be helpful to the experimenters, and thus, evaluated Tom according to the type of prime that they were exposed to. In addition, some of the participants may have also answered inaccurately in their questionnaires, either by giving wrong answers, siding to the extreme answers, or giving answers that are too liberal. Another weakness of the study is that it is not high in external validity. The findings of this study are somewhat generalizable to different people and situations. For one thing, in ambiguous situations in the real world, people tend to form impressions of the behaviors of strangers. In a similar way, we can see that the participants are forming impressions of a character named Tom by watching his ambiguous actions through a video that lacks sound. On the other hand, the participants are watching Tom’s actions in the video over the span of a few days (although the video is 5 minutes long, Tom’s actions are shown over the span of a few days), while in reality, people may form impressions of others in the course of a few minutes. Furthermore, since the study was high in control (due to random assignment and the use of a control group) and conducted in a closed setting, the findings are not illustrative of real-life settings. For example, if the study was conducted on a street where participants were instructed to walk by an untidy old man sitting on the sidewalk and form an impression of him, instead of actors in a video, the external validity would be a lot higher. The study could also be altered so that the participants would be passengers on a bus who would be asked to form impressions of another passenger who is scratching his face and looking around repeatedly.
Priming is an amazing force that influences how we think and decide. Although we may not notice that our recent experiences affect our lives, they nevertheless have an effect on us. Research on priming is crucial to our understanding of how we form impressions of strangers and ambiguous situations. By being aware of the process of priming, we can avoid forming wrong and inaccurate impressions of others, and instead think more logically before forming an impression.
Akert, R.M., Aronson, E., & Wilson, T.D. (2005). Social Psychology (5th Edition). Social Cognition: How We Think About the Social World (65-67). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Dijksterhuis, A., Dovidio, J.F., & Kawakami, K. (2003). Effect of Social Category Priming on Personal Attitudes. Psychological Science, 14 (4), 315-319 . Encarta Online Encyclopedia (2005). Memory. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved April 8, 2005,from http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761578303_2/Memory_ (psychology).html Koomen, W., & Stapel, D.A. (1997). Using Primed Exemplars During Impression Formation: Interpretation or Comparison? European Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 357-367.
