Replicable effects of primes on human behavior
Payne and colleagues set out to show that priming effects can be obtained reliably when the experiment is designed differently. Rather than comparing groups of people, they used a procedure in which the same participant makes many decisions, betting or passing on each round of a gambling game, with primes varying between rounds. Across six replications with nearly a thousand participants, primes consistently shifted decisions, but only when the decision was genuinely uncertain, which is a meaningful constraint. The effect appeared with primes presented visibly and accompanied by an instruction to ignore them, and with primes presented too briefly to be consciously seen. Further experiments separated automatic from controlled influence and found both at work. The authors' framing is the useful part: whether priming affects behaviour is a psychological question, and how easily a given experimental design will replicate is a methodological one, and the failures of the past decade concern the second more than the first.
Payne and colleagues set out to show that priming effects can be obtained reliably when the experiment is designed differently. Rather than comparing groups of people, they used a procedure in which the same participant makes many decisions, betting or passing on each round of a gambling game, with primes varying between rounds. Across six replications with nearly a thousand participants, primes consistently shifted decisions, but only when the decision was genuinely uncertain, which is a meaningful constraint. The effect appeared with primes presented visibly and accompanied by an instruction to ignore them, and with primes presented too briefly to be consciously seen. Further experiments separated automatic from controlled influence and found both at work. The authors' framing is the useful part: whether priming affects behaviour is a psychological question, and how easily a given experimental design will replicate is a methodological one, and the failures of the past decade concern the second more than the first.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
N = 988, within-subjects gambling task. Preregistration status not established.
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/xge0000201
DOI: 10.1037/xge0000201