Subliminal Priming (subliminal + priming)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


RATS, We Should Have Used Clinton: Subliminal Priming in Political Campaigns

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2008
Joel Weinberger
Political strategists decide daily how to market their candidates. Growing recognition of the importance of implicit processes (processes occurring outside of awareness) suggests limitations to focus groups and polling, which rely on conscious self-report. Two experiments, inspired by national political campaigns, employed Internet-presented subliminal primes to study evaluations of politicians. In Experiment 1, the subliminal word "RATS" increased negative ratings of an unknown politician. In Experiment 2, conducted during former California Governor Gray Davis's recall referendum, a subliminal photo of Clinton affected ratings of Davis, primarily among Independents. Results showed that subliminal stimuli can affect ratings of well-known as well as unknown politicians. Further, subliminal studies can be conducted in a mass media outlet (the Internet) in real time and supplement voter self-report, supporting the potential utility of implicit measures for campaign decision making. [source]


Implicit Theories of Organizational Power and Priming Effects on Managerial Power-Sharing Decisions: An Experimental Study,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
Peter T. Coleman
Over 60 years of research on participative leadership has documented the many benefits of power sharing in organizations. However, a common obstacle to power sharing is the unwillingness of those with power to share it. An experimental study is presented that investigated the effects of managers' implicit theories of power in organizations on their willingness to share power with subordinates. The study proposed that chronic differences in implicit power theories (the degree of competitive vs. cooperative beliefs and ideals regarding organizational power relations) would affect managers' decisions to share or withhold power. Subliminal priming was predicted to temporarily enhance the accessibility of these differences in implicit power theories, thereby fostering or inhibiting spontaneous decisions to share power. Results indicate that the subliminal priming of competitive theories of organizational power negatively influenced managers' immediate, spontaneous decisions to share power, whereas chronic differences in their implicit theories similarly affected their more systematic decisions to share power. The theoretical and applied contributions of the study are discussed. [source]


Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: a priming study

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2007
Isabelle Pichon
Past literature on the automaticity of social behavior indicates that priming a concept automatically activates related behavioral schemas. In the two present studies we examined the impact of religion on prosociality. In the first study, we tested the impact of subliminal priming of religious concepts on prosocial behavior intentions. We found a main effect of this priming, moderated by valence: prosocial behavior tendencies were stronger when positive religious words had previously been subliminally primed. In the second study, we examined the accessibility of prosocial concepts, after the supraliminal activation of religion. Indeed, we found that not only were religion-related attributes more accessible when primed, but positive religious primes were also able to activate prosocial concepts. While previous research has shown the religion-prosociality link at the explicit level and in terms of the role of individual religiousness, these results indicate that religious concepts by themselves can nonconsciously activate prosocial behavioral schemas. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Implicit Theories of Organizational Power and Priming Effects on Managerial Power-Sharing Decisions: An Experimental Study,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
Peter T. Coleman
Over 60 years of research on participative leadership has documented the many benefits of power sharing in organizations. However, a common obstacle to power sharing is the unwillingness of those with power to share it. An experimental study is presented that investigated the effects of managers' implicit theories of power in organizations on their willingness to share power with subordinates. The study proposed that chronic differences in implicit power theories (the degree of competitive vs. cooperative beliefs and ideals regarding organizational power relations) would affect managers' decisions to share or withhold power. Subliminal priming was predicted to temporarily enhance the accessibility of these differences in implicit power theories, thereby fostering or inhibiting spontaneous decisions to share power. Results indicate that the subliminal priming of competitive theories of organizational power negatively influenced managers' immediate, spontaneous decisions to share power, whereas chronic differences in their implicit theories similarly affected their more systematic decisions to share power. The theoretical and applied contributions of the study are discussed. [source]


The application of subliminal priming in lie detection: Scenario for identification of members of a terrorist ring

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
Ming Lui
Abstract We studied a lie detection protocol immune to countermeasures. The 4 stimulus conditions were (1 and 2) supraliminal acquaintance name primed by subliminal acquaintance name (A-A) versus subliminal nonacquaintance name (N-A) and (3 and 4) supraliminal nonacquaintance name primed by subliminal acquaintance name (A-N) versus subliminal nonacquaintance name (N-N). In Experiment 1 and replication, principal components analysis-derived event-related potential components revealed significant differences between dishonestly answered supraliminal acquaintance conditions with differing primes (A-A vs. N-A). In Experiment 2 subjects were required to lie in A-N and N-N conditions, in contrast to Experiment 1, in which subjects lied in A-A and N-A conditions. No significant effects were found. In Experiment 3, the lying task was removed and no significant differences were found. We conclude that subliminal primes modulate ERPs in conditions with supraliminal acquaintance name when the task involves lying. [source]