On the consequences of priming: Assimilation and contrast effects
Herr and colleagues examine when priming a concept makes a subsequent judgment move towards it and when it pushes the judgment the other way. Both happen. Prime a mild example of hostility and an ambiguous person is judged more hostile, which is assimilation. Prime an extreme example and the same person is judged less hostile, which is contrast, because the extreme case has become the standard of comparison. The paper's contribution is to specify the conditions rather than to report an effect, and the practical consequence is considerable: the same prime can produce opposite results depending on how extreme it is and how ambiguous the target is. It also explains part of why priming findings are inconsistent, since a study that does not control both is measuring an unstable quantity. Written without an abstract, from the title and public accounts of the effects it distinguishes.
Herr and colleagues examine when priming a concept makes a subsequent judgment move towards it and when it pushes the judgment the other way. Both happen. Prime a mild example of hostility and an ambiguous person is judged more hostile, which is assimilation. Prime an extreme example and the same person is judged less hostile, which is contrast, because the extreme case has become the standard of comparison. The paper's contribution is to specify the conditions rather than to report an effect, and the practical consequence is considerable: the same prime can produce opposite results depending on how extreme it is and how ambiguous the target is. It also explains part of why priming findings are inconsistent, since a study that does not control both is measuring an unstable quantity. Written without an abstract, from the title and public accounts of the effects it distinguishes.
Written from the the paper's title and public accounts of the effects it distinguishes.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
The prime-density and contrast finding Bargh's 2012 defence relies on.
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/10.1016/0022-1031(83)90026-490026-4)
DOI: 10.1016/0022-1031(83)90026-4