The relation between perception and behavior, or how to win a game of Trivial Pursuit.

Abstract

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. I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.-Christopher Isherwood Some time ago, a few members of the Department of Social Psychology of the University of Nijmegen visited a soccer match. After they had parked their car, they walked the remaining mile to the stadium. The psychologists, behaving calmly and orderly as ever, were surrounded by hundreds of soccer fans and hooligans, many of whom were yelling and shouting. After some time, one of the members of the department engaged in somewhat unusual behavior. He saw an empty beer can, and, in what seemed to be an impulsive act, he kicked it as far away as possible. During the next few minutes, he and a slightly embarrassed colleague pondered on possible explanations. One explanation is that, upon seeing soccer hooligans, one may-without being aware of it-start to act like them. That is, the activation of the representation of soccer hooligans leads to the tendency to behave similarly. Recent research showed that this is indeed possible. The mere perception of a person or a group of persons triggers a mechanism producing the tendency to behave correspondingly. In a series of studies, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) demonstrated such unconscious and unintentional effects of perception on social behavior. It was established that priming someone with a trait (e.g., rudeness) or a stereotype (e.g., elderly, African American) indeed leads to

Exploring the Automatic Undercurrents of Sexual Narcissism: Individual Differences in the Sex-Aggression Link

“…Instead, we would argue that our findings constitute an example of behavior priming. As has been argued previously (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996;Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998), semantic content may automatically activate associated behavioral schemata. In addition to previous behavior priming effects, we provided evidence for individual differences in the architecture of the nomological network.…”

The elusive nature of the blocking effect: 15 failures to replicate.

“…individuals can be implicitly primed to walk faster or slower (e.g. Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996) or to behave more or less intelligently (Dijksterhuis & Knippenberg, 1998)), some researchers have recently started to question the mere existence of social priming (e.g. Shanks et al, 2013).…”

Principles, processes, and puzzles of social cognition: An introduction for the special issue on social cognitive neuroscience

“…In related work, others have found that individuals score better or worse on tests of general knowledge depending on whether they have been primed with Fprofessor_ or Fsupermodel_, respectively (Dijksterhuis and Van Knippenberg, 1998). On the other side of the coin, stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995) refers to a phenomenon whereby priming one's group membership (e.g., race or gender) can raise the specter of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group and can lead to impaired performances.…”