Top-of-Mind Accessibility
Top-of-mind accessibility is the principle that whatever was activated most recently is easiest to retrieve, and that what is easiest to retrieve gets acted on. The cognitive core, that recent and frequent activation speeds retrieval, is robust and begins with Jerome Bruner's work on perceptual readiness in 1957. The social-judgement extension is weaker, and one of its landmark paradigms failed a registered replication. The consumer version, that retrievable brands enter a consideration set, has independent support. The uncomfortable implication of the whole family is that a large share of what looks like preference is really retrieval order.
What it is
Bruner introduced accessibility as a construct, and the classic priming demonstration in impression formation is Tory Higgins, William Rholes and Carl Jones in 1977, where recently activated trait categories shaped how an ambiguous person was described. Allan Collins and Elizabeth Loftus supplied the spreading activation account, and John Bargh, Wendy Lombardi and Higgins later distinguished chronic accessibility, the categories a person reaches for habitually, from the momentary kind.
Jonah Berger's phrasing in Contagious, that top of mind leads to tip of tongue, is the practitioner compression of it, and the marketing reading follows directly: a brand that is easy to retrieve at the moment of choice enters the set of options considered, and a brand that is not does not.
In effect
The evidence separates cleanly into three layers, and they should not be argued as one. The cognitive layer holds: recent and frequent activation speeds retrieval, and that has never been in serious dispute. The social-judgement layer is where the trouble is. The hostility-priming paradigm of Srull and Wyer from 1979 was put through a registered replication report by Randy McCarthy and colleagues in 2018, across many laboratories, and the effect came out close to zero. The consumer layer has its own support independent of the social-priming literature, in work on brand retrieval and consideration sets.
The worked example in Contagious is a good illustration and a bad citation, and the failure is in the apparatus rather than in the idea. Berger reports Mars bar sales rising in 1997 around the landing of the Pathfinder mission, with no marketing change. His own endnote points to a newspaper story about sales of toy rovers rather than about Mars bars. The claim in the text is not supported by the source behind it, and it should not be repeated in that form.
What it does not say
It does not say that priming a concept reliably changes a social judgement. That is the claim the replication record has not supported, and this concept should not be used to smuggle it back in.
It does not say that accessibility explains preference. It explains which options are considered, which is upstream of preference and not the same thing.
It does not support the Mars bar story as printed. Treat it as an unsourced illustration.
Sources
- Bruner, J. S. (1957). "On perceptual readiness." Psychological Review, 64(2), 123-152. The construct's origin.
- Higgins, E. T., Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. (1977). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 141-154. The classic priming demonstration in impression formation.
- Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975), on spreading activation; Bargh, J. A., Lombardi, W. J., & Higgins, E. T. (1988), on chronic accessibility.
- McCarthy, R. J., et al. (2018). "Registered Replication Report on Srull and Wyer (1979)." Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1(3). Found a hostility-priming effect close to zero across many laboratories.
- Nedungadi, P. (1990). Journal of Consumer Research. Independent support for the consumer version, that retrievable brands enter consideration sets.
- Contagious, Jonah Berger, ch. 2, pp. 70-71. Berger's endnotes credit the underlying accessibility work correctly. The Mars bar and Pathfinder illustration is not supported by his own endnote, which concerns toy rover sales.
- Evidence status mixed, following the verification verdict of 2026-09-25.