Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The priming effect refers to the positive or negative effect of a rapidly presented stimulus (priming stimulus) on the processing of a second stimulus (target stimulus) that appears shortly after. Generally speaking, the generation of priming effect depends on the existence of some positive or negative relationship between priming and target stimuli.
Wikipeadia
Today’s “Bias and Wisdom in Decision Making” class delved into the concept of priming effects. Essentially, we navigated through intricate psychological experiments that adeptly bamboozled participants, employing cunning maneuvers to manipulate their decisions and behaviors. Unlike economic experiments, where participants are forthrightly apprised of the experiment settings, these psychological experiments artfully duped participants, employing diversions to nudge them into exhibiting the desired behaviors.
For instance, one experiment devised a scenario in which participants ultimately had to decide (and comment upon) whether they’d hire a fellow named Steve. Steve was merely a “target” individual who coincidentally shared an elevator ride with the participant, entrusting them with the task of holding a cup of coffee. Surprisingly, clutching a hot cappuccino for Steve yielded significantly more favorable comments than the ice americano control group.
Tricky. The veracity of these seemingly enchanting phenomena is questionable, whether they truly stem from genuine causation or merely emerge from tenuous correlations or shrewd experimental designs. Ironically, a section on “replicability controversy” can be found in its Wikipedia page:
Daniel Kahneman has called on priming researchers to check the robustness of their findings in an open letter to the community, claiming that priming has become a “poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research.”
In 2022, Kahneman described behavioral priming research as “effectively dead”. (wow, this is a strong claim btw) Other critics have asserted that priming studies suffer from major publication bias, experimenter effect and that criticism of the field is not dealt with constructively.
Kahneman’s stance is understandable, considering his dual expertise in psychology and economics. From an economist’s vantage point, theories should exhibit a level of abstraction that facilitates broader applicability and predictive capability. Yet, psychology experiments are deeply contingent on the art of framing. Discrepancies in methodology and the way both disciplines embrace their theories inevitably lead to discord.
Although the outcomes might face resistance within the discerning economic community, there’s no denying that priming effects and these behavioral stratagems wield substantial and potentially far-reaching economic influence. Supermarkets, for instance, strategically position their delectable bakery sections at the outset of the shopping journey, and indisputably, this maneuver boosts overall revenue. Psychological research asserts that adopting a confident, “open” posture can enhance cognitive self-assurance and positively impact performance, like increasing the score of a subsequent job interview. Economists may wave it off as nonsense, unquantifiable even in the most rudimentary terms of behavioral economics, but the efficacy is undeniable and occasionally transformative.
Not everything can be neatly confined within the rigid spectrum of demand, supply, and utility. Thinking about these phenomenons just for fun is enjoyable. Yet, sometimes it irks me when certain individuals haphazardly extrapolate these experimental findings and carelessly draw analogue conclusions into other common sense scenarios. These casual deductions are disgusting. So, in terms of research, I gotta be honest, a more rigorous economic perspective is more preferable.