Priming is a psychological phenomenon in which our decisions and action can be affected by previously exposed stimuli. It is amazing how priming affects us without us noticing. For example, complete the following word:

B E _ _ _ _.

 

If you have reached this site starting from the homepage, it is likely that you would have picked ‘BEHIND’, because of the ‘mind-reading ~behind the scenes~’ written below the title on the homepage.

 

The effect of priming is unconscious and usual relates to implicit and non-declarative memory. Even a brief exposure to a stimulus causes immediate processing in our minds and the non-declarative of the stimuli affects or alters are choices and decisions afterwards. Companies use priming a lot in advertisement with postures and commercials, to influence our decisions when choosing different products. In addition, the careful use of language can also prime us to make certain decisions. Glen McCoy, a business speaker and writer, explained how this relates to buying coffee at Starbucks (McCoy, 2012). Instead of asking for what you want, cashiers ask if they can have your coffee order ‘started’. He suggests that the word ‘started’ primes us to think we have a set of orders to make, increasing the chance that we will subsequently order something in addition to the coffee order without telling us to do so explicitly.

 

This is a type of semantic priming, as we will discuss later below.

 

There are different categorizations and types of priming. Perceptual priming involves the similarity of form between the previously exposed stimuli and our altered response (such as a choice or decision), while conceptual priming involves conceptual similarity between the stimulus and our response (Matsukawa, Snodgrass & Doniger, 2005). Semantic priming on the other hand involves pre-exposed stimulus and our altered response being related in terms of meaning, where we would categorize them together based on shared meanings or features. An example would be bread and pie (Ferrand & New, 2003). If we were previously presented with a piece of bread, and then told to choose between pie and bicycle, we are more likely to choose pie because pie and bread are both pastry. In the Starbucks example above, the pre-exposed stimulus is the word ‘started’ and according to Glen McCoy, the altered response would be to ‘finish’ the order – by ordering something else ‘after’ the coffee order (McCoy, 2012). Associative priming refers to priming in which the pre-exposed stimuli and the response are associated with each other, regardless of whether they are similar or not, such as ‘cats’ and ‘dogs’ or ‘butter’ and ‘bread’ (Ferrand & New, 2003).

 

The types of priming mentioned above are categorized based on the relation between the pre-exposed stimuli and the new one. They are closely related and sometimes there may be overlap between the types. For example, a ‘bottle’ and a ‘jar’ may look similar to one and another (perceptual priming) but are also semantically related because they are both containers (semantic priming).

 

On the other hand, mask priming is a type of priming based on the way of presenting the stimuli. The pre-exposed, or masked, stimulus is briefly presented to the subject without it being brought up to the subject’s attention or awareness (Dehaene et. al., 1998). This is also called subliminal priming, because the person is unconsious of the stimuli. Repetition priming is another common type of priming in which we experience repeated exposure to the same stimulus. We will experience quicker response to the stimuli because we have been previously exposed to it (Reference).

 

Mentalists may use subliminal priming by presenting a stimulu to someone very quickly such that the person consciously, does not know what the stimulus was. The mentalist would then use words to guide the person to retrieve implicit memory of that stimulus they were unconscoiusly primed with, and would assume that his or her thoughts were read by the mentalist. The mentalist are predicting the individual’s decisions and actions as if they have controlled the individual to do so.This is an example of mind-reading by direct priming, where the mentalist him or herself directly primes the subject. A similar method is indirect priming, where the mentalist does not  prime the subject directly, but observes how he or she is being primed by other cues. For example,  when a group of person is told to choose one out of the balls, all of different colours, one after the other, a mentalist would be able to tell which colour ball each individual chooses after every trial without looking.(Daigo & Arashi). This is because each individual is primed with the choice of the previous person and by experience, the mentalist would be able to predict the choice of the subsequent individual.