Priming

Semantic priming works: seeing a word makes related words faster to recognise, a finding repeated thousands of times. But many famous claims that unnoticed cues change behaviour, such as old age words slowing people's walking or thinking of professors raising quiz scores, did not hold up in large, careful replications.

What the report found

1. The basic effect is solid. People recognise a word faster when they have just seen a related one, such as butter after bread. This has been repeated thousands of times.
2. The famous behavioural effects were striking. In a 1996 study, students who had unscrambled words about old age took 8.28 seconds to walk down a corridor, against 7.30 seconds for others.
3. Many did not survive retesting. When the walking study was repeated with automatic timing, the effect disappeared. A 23-lab test of priming people with the idea of a professor found a difference of 0.14 percentage points, essentially none.
4. The problem was wider than priming. When 100 psychology studies were repeated, 97 per cent of the originals had reported significant results, but only 36 per cent of the repeats did.
5. Researchers still disagree about how much is left. Some reviews find a small average effect of primes on behaviour; critics argue that much of it reflects which studies were published.

What is inside

1. The idea and where it came from
2. The original studies, explained
3. What happened when others tested it
4. Where researchers disagree
5. What we can say with confidence

Plus a timeline of fifty years of priming research, the many-labs results and a graded list of claims.

Who it is for

For marketers, designers, researchers and anyone who has quoted a priming study in a presentation.

How we work

Evidence Reviews follow one well known idea from its origin to today. Every claim is graded Established, Emerging or Untested. Where researchers disagree, as they do on whether any behavioural priming survives, both sides are set out before we say where we stand.

Cite this report

The Why We Project (2026) Priming: What survived the replication crisis. Evidence Review No. 09. Dubai: Why We Tech Ltd. Available at: thewhyweproject.com