Understanding Priming Effects in Social Psychology: An Overview and Integration

Molden, Daniel C.

doi:10.1521/soco.2014.32.supp.243

Cited by 83 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…Common theoretical accounts of social priming assume that it results from spreading activation in semantic networks or in perceptionaction associations [36][37][38]. As we have seen, the extensive presence of modulating factors greatly complicates these accounts, requiring the presence of complex pathways between primes and primed responses.…”

Section: Reconceptualizing Social Primingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Situated conceptualization offers a theoretical account of social priming

Barsalou

2016

Current Opinion in Psychology

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The theory of situated conceptualization is introduced, including its core assumptions about the construction and storage of situated conceptualizations, the production of pattern completion inferences in relevant situations, and the implementation of these inferences via multimodal simulation. The broad applicability of the theory to many phenomena is reviewed, as is its ability to explain individual differences. The theory is then applied to social priming, showing that the theory provides a natural account of the diverse forms it takes. The theory also explains why social priming is difficult to define, why it often reflects modulating factors, and why it can be difficult to replicate. The importance of studying pattern completion inferences in the context of meaningful situated action receives emphasis.

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Section: Reconceptualizing Social Primingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Situated conceptualization offers a theoretical account of social priming

Barsalou

2016

Current Opinion in Psychology

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“…academic performance, walking speed, helping behavior) without their intention or awareness (for reviews see e.g. Aarts 2007;Bargh, 2006;Molden, 2014) and recently research has turned to consideration of mechanisms that might explain these behavioral effects. Current research suggests that primes affect behavior via changes in the active self-concept.…”

Section: Priming Behavioral Manifestations Of Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic effects of illness schema activation on behavioral manifestations of illness.

Orbell¹,

Henderson²

2016

Health Psychology

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Objective: Relatively little research has directly evaluated the schematic nature of illness representations proposed by the common sense model of illness. Four studies tested the hypothesis that illness schema activation leads directly and automatically to behavioral manifestations of illness. Methods: Study 1 was a survey (N = 970) that evaluated the proposition that the mental representation of common cold symptom experience includes functional deviation from the usual prototypical self. Studies 2 and 3 were experiments that tested effects of cold schema activation using a subliminal priming paradigm on walking speed (Study 2, N = 53) and free recall in a memory task (Study 3, N = 30). Study 4 (N = 65) used a 2 (cold prime vs. control) X 2 (alternate self vs. control) experimental design to investigate attenuation of the effect of the cold prime on free recall. Results: Study 1 confirmed the multifactorial nature of functional self-deviations representing the common cold symptomology. Studies 2 and 3 showed that participants primed with the common cold schema walked more slowly and performed worse on a memory recall task relative to controls in whom the schema was not activated. These effects were automatic in the sense that participants were not aware of the prime or of this influence. In Study 4, priming an alternative self-identity overcame the deleterious effect of automatic common cold schema activation on free recall in a memory task. Conclusions: Subliminal activation of a schematic representation of illness automatically activates behavioral manifestations of illness.

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“…With that said, the existence of prime-to-behavior effects has recently come into question (e.g., Cesario, 2014;Molden, 2014;Simons, 2014), and some canonical priming experiments have failed to replicate (Harris, Coburn, Rohrer, & Pashler, 2013;Shanks et al, 2013; for a full list, see https:// proveyourselfwrong.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/a-list-ofsuccessful-and-unsuccessful-high-powered-directreplications-of-social-psychology-findings/). There are many reasons that a replication may fail to reproduce the effects of the original study that include problems in the original study such as small sample sizes (for an in-depth analysis, see the 2012 special issue of Perspectives in Psychological Science) as well as fluctuations in effect size due to sampling error, and unknown contextual factors that moderate the effect.…”

Section: Provoked Confabulation In Nonclinical Samplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why did I do that? Explaining actions activated outside of awareness

et al. 2017

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We review the latest research investigating how people explain their own actions when they have been activated nonconsciously. We will discuss evidence that when nonconsciously activated behavior is unexpected (e.g., normviolating, against self -standards), negative affect arises and triggers confabulations aimed to explain the behavior. Nonconsciously activated behaviors may provide a window into everyday confabulation of (erroneous) explanations for behavior, which may also affect self-knowledge. Implications for self-concept formation and intentionality are discussed.Keywords Confabulation . Explanatory vacuum . Nonconscious goal pursuit . PrimingWe frequently answer questions about why we acted the way we did. BWhy did you take that job?^BWhy did you vote for that candidate?^In many cases, the real answers to these questions may never come to light because we have little introspective access to the mental processes that led to our choices and behaviors (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). As a result, the explanations that people provide are (at least in part) confabulations, Bbased on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response^(p. 231). In this article, we will review the evidence that people confabulate explanations for their own behavior. We will emphasize instances in which the behavior to be explained was triggered automatically-by incidental cues in the environmentwhere there is emerging evidence that confabulations can both be provoked (when an experimenter asks for an explanation) and arise spontaneously (when the automatic behavior triggers negative affect by virtue of being unexpected).Do people really generate spontaneous confabulatory explanations for their behavior? In everyday life it is often difficult (or impossible) to assess the relationship between the origin of a given behavior and a person's explanation for performing that very same behavior. As a result, one challenge for researchers to understand these confabulated explanations for behavior is to identify contexts in which relevant causes are known. As we will review, some research directly asks people to explain their behavior, yielding evidence for provoked confabulations in both clinical and nonclinical settings. Recent research has used behaviors activated outside of awareness as a case in which researchers may further understand when and in what contexts people confabulate reasons for their behavior, not only when provoked but also spontaneously.Historically, explanations were shown to be erroneous (i.e., confabulatory) in a clinical context. Confabulations were classified as a disorder of memory (Hirstein, 2005) and related to delusions (Turner & Coltheart, 2010). In these cases, the content of the confabulation is verifiably false-a patient might describe a distant memory as a recent event. But as we will review, this behavior is not limited to clinical samples and there may be very little observable difference between confabulation and ...

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Understanding Priming Effects in Social Psychology: An Overview and Integration

Cited by 83 publications

References 18 publications

Situated conceptualization offers a theoretical account of social priming

Situated conceptualization offers a theoretical account of social priming

Automatic effects of illness schema activation on behavioral manifestations of illness.

Why did I do that? Explaining actions activated outside of awareness

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