Subtle cues are claimed to shift subsequent unrelated behaviour outside awareness.
A central casualty of the replication crisis. Bargh's elderly-words walking-speed study and the money-priming literature have largely failed to reproduce, and the field has substantially retrenched.
In practice
- A firm that repaints its meeting rooms to encourage creative thinking has repainted its meeting rooms.
- The lesson that survives is methodological rather than psychological — the effect sizes were implausibly large for the manipulation, and nobody asked.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is that a cue activates a concept which then influences unrelated behaviour without awareness. The explanation for the results themselves is now largely methodological: small samples, flexible analysis and selective publication.
- In its favour
- Semantic priming, where a word speeds recognition of a related word, is robust and unaffected by the collapse of the behavioural literature.
- Against it
- The behavioural claims have largely failed to replicate, including the elderly-words walking-speed study and the money-priming literature, and the area is a central case in the replication crisis.
- Standing
- A central casualty of the replication crisis; the behavioural priming literature has largely failed to replicate.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop