Automaticity & Priming Flashcards
What do the studies on priming tell us about how primes influence our behavior?
They shape our subjective construals, which then guide our behavior
How do subliminal and non-subliminal priming differ?
In real life, we are mostly primed by non-subliminal primes (e.g.
situational cues like being in a library)
(like subliminal messages?)
The Four Horsemen of Automaticity are rules that describe what
automaticity does not require. Which of the following is not included as one of those rules?
Automaticity doesn’t facilitate performance on tasks
A researcher designs an experiment where he asks participants to make a
judgment. In one condition, participants are under cognitive load, and in the other,
they are not under cognitive load. If participants in both conditions make the same
judgment, what does that tell us about that judgment?
Its automatic
What are the Four Horsemen of Automaticity?
William James, John Bargh
1: Does’t require INTENTION
- you don’t have to force yourself to see a red
square, you just do see it
2: Doesn’t require AWARENESS (of the process)
3: Doesn’t INTERFERE with others (free up resources)
- you can rehearse a song while looking at the red
square bc you’re not trying to see the red square
4: Doesn’t require EFFORT
- looking at the red square doesn’t feel effortful, you
don’t have to try hard to see it
What is Priming
Throughout our life we make associations between items
like “men are bad at english, women are bad at math”
exposed to things in pairs, paired in MEMORY
Freuds view of Automaticity
The unconscious served as a way to bury the awful things about the self as a way to protect us
(research doesn’t support the idea that we are constantly trying to keep things from reaching consciousness) our consciousness isn’t that smart to hide things from us
Dynamic Pattern Completion
- Our brain automatically fills in missing parts of objects we have seen before and are familiar with
- Can also apply to our judgements/perceptions of situations
- competing inputs (constraints) - Largely happens automatically
Competing Constraints
Depending on the situation context, different automatic processes can occur
The same framework can reach different conclusions based on different changes in your beliefs and understanding of a situation
Soft and hard constraints : hard constraints are fixed things you dont want to budge on, but you can be flexible with soft constraints
Perceptual Automaticity
Seeing a red square with no effort
Semantic Automaticity
romeo and _____
You automatically say Juliet bc of past knowledge and association of the two
semantic - processing the meaning of the words
Supraliminal Priming
above awareness people can be aware of words, but not the effect of the actions next
we are aware of what we see, but not aware of the effect it will have on us -> have a bigger effect on us
*we are mostly primed by supraliminal primes like being in a library
Subliminal Priming
nothing consciously registers ( we cant say what we saw, but it still registers and has an effect on our judgement)
flashes super fast
What results can priming have?
1: influence our judgements
2: affect our behaviors
3: influence our goals
Primes shape our construals
primes only affect construals when applicable to the behaviors
What type of prime has the strongest influence on our judgements and behavior?
Supraliminal primes (above threshold) b/c we are not aware in studies that these messages are supposed to have an effect
