Priming: A Window into Our Unconscious Decisions
By Jacalyn Ring
I was assigned an interior classroom to teach in.
Without windows, I never got to see outside from when I arrived to work in the morning to when I left in the late afternoon. I didn’t know what the weather was like during the day. There were times I was surprised to see my car covered in snow or that I had wished I would have known to bring an umbrella. Sometimes I was thankful that I didn’t know it was so nice outside because I probably wouldn’t have gotten my work done. The worst was when it is late December when it is close to the winter solstice. It was dark when I arrived, and dark when I left. It was starting to wear on me, and I decided to do something about it.
I created two artificial windows and an artificial skylight in my classroom. To make the windows as real as possible, I hung large posters showing the beaches of Tahiti. Around each poster, I mounted wood to create a window frame and hung curtains. I bought a large ceiling mural I pasted to the ceiling of the classroom. It was of a blue sky with wisping clouds. It thought this effort was a quirky pick-me-up, and almost meant to be funny.
What I didn’t realize was how it was going to affect the conduct of my students in the classroom. Their positive behavior increased significantly. It turns out momentary happiness depends on what the weather is outside (Tsutsui, 2013).
A view of the beaches of Tahiti from Mrs. Ring’s classroom in Duluth, MN
I had unintentionally primed my students. Priming is when our behavior is influenced by something we were exposed to without being aware of what is guiding our behavior. In Julia Shaw’s book The Memory Illusion, she writes about how priming is part of our implicit memory and compares it to an expression of feeling in which we cannot remember its origin. Our previous experiences inform our present or future experiences without us consciously realizing we are being influenced by those past experiences.
Dr. Peter Naish demonstrated how priming through memory can influence behavior on Bang Goes the Theory, a British television science magazine series, co-produced by the BBC and The Open University. For his priming experiment, he wanted to test if handling money can seep into our memories and influence behavior. He had one group count real money while another group counted slips of paper (the groups thought the experiment was about right or left-handedness). The results were that when given candy to eat, the group that counted money ate 50% more candy than the group that counted paper slips. Researchers believed the group was primed to believe that having money meant they were abundant with food and resources. Also, when the participants were told to put their hands in icy water to see how long they could withstand being physically uncomfortable, the money-counting participants were able to keep their hands in the icy water twice as long as the paper-counting participants. The researchers believed they were subconsciously primed into believing that money equals power, and power equals strength, and strength equals a greater threshold to pain. The researchers backed their results with other studies that had similar findings and feel their results were valid by 98.6%.
It was amazing to learn how people’s perception of the world or their behaviors were easily manipulated by environmental influences. For example, research that is highlighted in this article found that by simply holding a warm drink rather than a cold one, we tend to judge other people as more generous and caring. We are primed into associating warmth with caring and generosity. Another priming result they found was how environmental influences affect how we negotiate. People are more willing to compromise in price negotiations if they sat in soft, comfortable chairs compared to those who sat in hard chairs with no cushion. Feeling comfortable leads us to be willing to open up and be non-confrontational. They were willing to listen and negotiate. This is something we should consider when needing to sit down to discuss a compromise with others (Snyder, 2011).
After learning about priming, it makes me wonder how much I am subconsciously influenced by the decisions I make. My memory of previous experiences may have guided me into certain behaviors in which I am unaware of. No matter how much I am paying attention, my behavior may have been encoded by deep-rooted imperceptible influences on my memory. So as far as my artificial windows go, I’ll be sure to keep the curtains open and enjoy the spectacular view.
References
Priming, Money, and the Effect on Us. (2020, March 31). Retrieved from https://clipsforclass.com/priming-money-and-the-effect-on-us
Shaw, J. (2016). The Memory Illusion. London, Great Britain: Random House Books.
Snyder, S. (2011, March 1). How Your Coffee Mug Controls Your Feelings. Retrieved from http://johnnyholland.org/2011/03/how-your-coffee-mug-controls-your-feelings-what-you-can-do-about-it/
Tsutsui, Y. (2013). Weather and Individual Happiness. Weather, Climate, and Society, 5(1), 70-‘82. doi: 10.1175/wcas-d-11-00052.1