Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action
This is the paper behind the best-known demonstration of behavioural priming. Participants unscrambled sentences containing words associated with old age, and were then timed as they walked down the corridor on leaving the laboratory. Those exposed to the age-related words were reported to have walked more slowly, without being aware that the words had influenced anything. The finding became a defining piece of evidence for the view that social behaviour runs largely on automatic processes outside awareness, and it has been cited thousands of times. It must not be cited here without its sequel. A later attempt to repeat it with a larger sample and automated timing found no effect, and a second experiment found the walking effect appearing only when the experimenters running the session expected it, which points at the experimenters rather than the participants. This page describes the original study from the published replication report, because no abstract of the 1996 paper is publicly available.
This is the paper behind the best-known demonstration of behavioural priming. Participants unscrambled sentences containing words associated with old age, and were then timed as they walked down the corridor on leaving the laboratory. Those exposed to the age-related words were reported to have walked more slowly, without being aware that the words had influenced anything. The finding became a defining piece of evidence for the view that social behaviour runs largely on automatic processes outside awareness, and it has been cited thousands of times. It must not be cited here without its sequel. A later attempt to repeat it with a larger sample and automated timing found no effect, and a second experiment found the walking effect appearing only when the experimenters running the session expected it, which points at the experimenters rather than the participants. This page describes the original study from the published replication report, because no abstract of the 1996 paper is publicly available.
Written from the described in the published replication report of it, which this vault also cites.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Experiment 2a: N = 30, elderly M = 8.28 s vs neutral M = 7.30 s, t(28) = 2.86. The blind experimenter and the separate hidden-stopwatch timer over 9.75 m are described in the methods section.
Where we use it
- What Forty-One Participants Buys, Why We Look
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230