These are two separate discussion posts not one paper. Both discussion posts need to be completed. Any references used should be in APA style.Supraliminal/Subliminal PrimesIn Chapter 7, Magee explains the differences between supraliminal and subliminal primes. Discuss a supraliminal and subliminal prime that you personally experienced. Describe how effective each prime was at influencing your impression of the prime’s target. In general, which type of prime do you feel is more effective at persuading audiences? Your initial response should be 150-200 words in length. Please support your claims with examples from the text, and/or scholarly articles. Entertainment EducationDescribe a television show you have seen that would be considered “entertainment education”. What message was it trying to educate to audiences? What are the benefits to using entertainment programs as a means of educating audiences? What are the detriments to this approach? Your initial response should be 150-200 words in length. Please support your claims with examples from the text, and/or scholarly articles. Reference:Magee, R. (2014). Persuasion: A social science approach. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
07ch_magee_persuasion.pdf
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7
Priming: Influencing Attitudes
and Behaviors
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Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
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•
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Explain the phenomenon of priming.
Distinguish between subliminal and supraliminal primes.
Discuss how priming is used in marketing.
Understand the three theories of nonconscious thinking.
Discuss the effect of priming in relation to stereotypes.
Apply priming to real-world contexts.
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Revisiting the Definition of Persuasion
Section 7.1
Do you chew your food to the beat of the music you hear? Does fast-tempo music lead you to
rush through your meal? In one study, over an 8-week period at a Dallas-area restaurant, the
background music varied between either slow or fast music to see what effect it might have
on diners (Milliman, 1986). The amount of money spent on food did not vary between the two
conditions, about $55. However, when slow music played, patrons spent about 56 minutes
dining in the restaurant, compared with only 45 minutes when fast music played. Further,
as patrons spent more time in the restaurant when slow music played, purchases from the
bar were significantly higher: $30 with slow music versus $22 with fast music. When slow
music played, patrons drank an average of three drinks per person more. Apparently, the slow
music helped to create a more relaxing atmosphere that encouraged patrons to linger, and as
patrons felt more relaxed, they tended to order more beverages from the bar.
Factors in your environment can do more than just affect your mood, however. Some cues
can actually influence what you think about or what you do. Priming is a phenomenon in
which a person is exposed to an external stimulus, either consciously or not, and this exposure subsequently influences how the person responds to altogether different stimuli or
behaves in a different context. The initial prime could be a word, an image, or a smell that
makes the idea more accessible. The prime will only have an effect, though, to the extent
that it is related to other concepts; that is, raising the accessibility of one idea will also
increase the accessibility of other ideas that are in that same network of associations. This
is referred to as spreading activation.
In Chapter 5, on the theory of planned behavior, we saw how people could be persuaded
through rational, effortful deliberative thinking. In Chapter 6, on dual-process models, we saw
that people could be persuaded either by effortful thinking, or low-effort thinking, or a combination of the two. In this chapter, we will see how people can be influenced through nonconscious thinking processes, merely by making a concept or idea more accessible to the mind.
We can be affected by a seemingly endless number of factors—from a restaurant menu’s
weight, the tempo of music playing in the background, the type of lighting in a room, the comfort of the chair we sit in. Those in the business of persuasion have begun to harness these
factors to influence people in many areas, such as sales, health, and politics. In this chapter,
we will explore the empirical research into the many ways we can be influenced without even
being aware of it.
7.1 Revisiting the Definition of Persuasion
If you recall the definition of persuasion in Chapter 1, action without thought cannot be
considered persuasion because the target’s free will is not involved. For an action to be an
attempt at persuasion, the target’s free will must be involved. Free will must involve reflective
awareness so that the target can make a conscious self-aware decision on how to respond to
the persuasion attempt. Priming does not force, or compel, a target to respond, so the person’s free will is not violated, but neither is the target’s free will involved in the attempt. So,
strictly speaking, attempts, such as priming, to influence people outside the use of their free
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Subliminal and Supraliminal Primes
Section 7.2
will cannot be considered to be persuasion. Many different kinds of cues in the environment
can lead people to change their behavior, but often people are unaware of them. In fact, when
people become aware of the cue, any influence over their action is eliminated. For example,
you saw in Chapter 1 that the weather, being either sunny or cloudy, had an influence on individuals’ satisfaction with life. However, when people were made aware that the weather can
influence attitudes, the weather no longer influenced their responses. So, because a target
usually is not consciously aware of the attempt to influence, the attempt cannot be labeled
persuasion. Further, although some automatic phenomena involve a target’s attitudes, other
attempts influence behavior without touching on a target’s attitudes.
Priming is a form of social influence, but it is not the same as persuasion. If you refer to Figure
1.1 in Chapter 1, you will see that automatic behavior (and compliance gaining, discussed in
more detail in Chapter 12) are related to, but distinct from, persuasion. In essence, priming
increases the accessibility of information from memory, and this information has an impact on
a person’s behavior in a way that the person is unaware of. Influence via priming is not, strictly
speaking, a form of persuasion because it does not meet the criteria for our definition of persuasion. Because it happens at a nonconscious level, this kind of influence does not involve the
target’s free will, and, many times, it does not involve a conscious change in attitudes. However,
you should know how cues in a given context, such as smells or colors, can influence attitudes
and behavior. What’s more, this vein of research likely will lead to important changes to our
understanding of persuasion in the future. In fact, in many ways, it already has.
7.2 Subliminal and Supraliminal Primes
In the 1950s, James Vicary sparked widespread fear in the United States. He said that he had
conducted experiments at a movie theater in New Jersey that increased the sales of popcorn
and Coca-Cola®. He said he placed a single slide or a movie frame of the phrase Eat popcorn or
Drink Coca-Cola in an advertising film roll, and claimed that these subliminal messages made
people purchase popcorn and Coca-Cola. When the news came out, people around the country
went crazy. This was around the time of the red scare, when many Americans were afraid of the
threat of communist infiltration posed by the Soviet Union. Lawmakers started decrying the
dangers posed by subliminal images. Preachers ranted against the threats to society. The whole
country was in an uproar. Researchers were fascinated by the possibility, but they were unable
to replicate the supposed results. Decades later, Vicary admitted that he had made the whole
thing up (Weir, 1984) in an attempt to drum up business for his fledgling marketing firm.
Nevertheless, for decades, and even to this day, many people think that we can be persuaded
by subliminal images or messages. Some countries even have bans on the use of subliminal
content in commercial messages. And as it turns out, more sophisticated tests are beginning
to reveal that subtle cues can, in certain instances, influence a person’s attitudes and even a
person’s behavior. And, yes, some of these cues fall into the realm of the subliminal—and also
the supraliminal.
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Subliminal and Supraliminal Primes
Section 7.2
A subliminal prime occurs below conscious awareness, much like the original subliminal message controversy
claimed. A supraliminal prime, on
the other hand, is one that a person is
aware of. On a technical note, whether
a prime is subliminal or supraliminal
is not a property of the prime itself; it
is a property of whether the person is
aware of it. For example, when wine
shoppers heard classical music in the
background, compared with pop music,
they tended to choose more expensive
wines and spend more money overall,
LOOK-foto/LOOK-foto even though they did not purchase a
Music is a prime that can influence how much diners greater number of bottles (Areni & Kim,
1993). In another field experiment over
purchase.
a 2-week period, supermarket sales
of French wine were higher on the
days that shoppers heard stereotypically French music, compared with German music (North,
Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1999). (See Table 7.1.) Further, the vast majority of shoppers who
responded to a questionnaire seemed to be unaware of the influence of music on their wine
choice. The shoppers obviously sensed the music, but its influence occurred below the level of
consciousness.
Table 7.1: Bottles sold within each music condition
Bottles sold
French music
German music
French wine
40
12
German wine
8
Source: Adapted from North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1999, p. 274.
22
Let’s consider an illustration of a supraliminal versus subliminal prime. If you walk through a
shopping mall and smell the aroma of chocolate chip cookies, that aroma could prime a memory of your grandmother, if that aroma is already associated with your grandmother. If you
are consciously aware of the aroma (e.g., “Oh, I love the smell of those cookies baking!”) and
also then remark to yourself that the smell reminds you of your grandmother, then the aroma
primed you supraliminally. If you did not notice the aroma, however, and “out of nowhere”
you think of your grandmother, then the aroma primed you subliminally. You very likely won’t
be aware of this priming, of course, because if you didn’t consciously note the aroma of the
cookies, then the thought of your grandmother will seem to you completely random. Likewise, the smell will remind you of your grandmother only if you already have an association
between that smell and your grandmother in your memory. Your friend could walk by the
same cookie store and not be reminded of her grandmother if there is no association in her
memory between the aroma of baking cookies and her grandmother.
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Priming and Marketing
Section 7.3
You saw in Chapter 2 that people can form an impression of a person’s interpersonal warmth
from viewing a face for as little of one-tenth of a second (Willis & Todorov, 2006). People also
form impressions of a website in a split second. This length of time is hardly long enough for
a person to engage in effortful deliberation; people have developed the ability to make an
evaluation nearly automatically. And people are constantly engaging in automatic thought.
Because of the spreading activation of ideas in a network, priming one concept can increase
the accessibility of related ideas automatically. So, any idea that has been primed has the
potential to influence someone’s impression of a target, whether that target is a menu, cookies, or a bottle of wine.
7.3 Priming and Marketing
There is ample empirical evidence mounting that subliminal primes have more influence than
once believed. And this research is already having a profound impact on marketing strategies.
Priming and Goals
Priming may have significant impact in the context of marketing, especially to an audience
that already is goal directed. For example, priming someone with thirst-related words can
lead a person to drink more, but only if that person is already thirsty. If that person is not
thirsty, then a subliminal prime will have no effect.
Let’s see how this was tested in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment that manipulated thirst (thirsty
versus not thirsty) and a subliminal prime (thirst prime versus neutral prime) (Strahan, Spencer, & Zanna, 2002). People were asked not to eat or drink anything 3 hours before the study,
which supposedly was a marketing study in which they would sample and evaluate a variety of
products. At the beginning of the study, they sampled a couple of cookies and evaluated them.
After this taste test, half of the participants were offered water “to cleanse the palate” and were
told they could drink as much water as they wanted. The other half did not receive any water. So,
half of the participants remained thirsty and the other half quenched their thirst.
All of the study participants then were seated at a computer and instructed to tell whether a
set of letters flashed on the screen was a word or not. Unknown to them, though, they were
also presented subliminal primes for a split second. Half of the participants were exposed
to thirst-related words such as “thirst” and “dry,” while the others were exposed to neutral
words, such as “pirate,” and “won.” After this, everyone participated in another taste test,
this time of two sweetened beverages, and they were told they could drink as much as they
wanted. After the participants left, the experimenter measured how much beverage they
had consumed.
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Priming and Marketing
Figure 7.1: Priming and thirst
For participants who were already thirsty, exposure to
words like “thirst” and “dry” had a significant effect on
the amount of water they later consumed.
210
200
Thirst-Related Primes
Neutral Primes
190
mL Consumed
It turned out that when people were not
thirsty, the thirst-related primes had no
effect on how they drank. However, people
who were thirsty and had been primed
with thirst-related words drank significantly more than thirsty people who had
been exposed to neutral words (see Figure 7.1). Thirsty people who had been
primed with neutral words did not drink
any more than the not-thirsty people. That
means that when a goal is already present,
a prime can influence someone’s behavior
toward that goal.
Section 7.3
180
170
160
150
So, a subliminal prime can influence how
much someone drinks, but can a sublimi140
nal prime influence an ad’s persuasive130
ness? The researchers conducted a similar
120
experiment that only involved thirsty
110
people. That is, no one drank water at the
Thirsty
Not Thirsty
beginning of the experiment. As before,
Subliminal Priming Condition
half of the participants were exposed subliminally to thirst-related words and half Source: Strahan, E. J., Spencer, S. J., & Zanna, M. P. (2002). Subliminal
were exposed to neutral words. Then, priming and persuasion: Striking while the iron is hot. Journal of
they examined two ads for sports bever- Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 556–568, fig.1. Published by
Elsevier. Reprinted with permission.
ages at the same time. One ad was for the
“Super-Quencher” and touted the beverage’s effectiveness in quenching thirst. The other ad
was for the “PowerPro” and highlighted the beverage’s ability to restore electrolytes. After
this, they reported their attitude toward the ads. They also were offered a total of nine coupons for the beverages and could choose how many they wanted of each type of beverage.
People who had been exposed to the subliminal thirst primes rated the Super-Quencher more
favorably than the PowerPro, but people who had been exposed to the neutral primes rated
each beverage about the same (see Figure 7.2). Also, people who were exposed to the thirst
primes chose a greater number of coupons for Super-Quencher than for PowerPro, compared
with those who were exposed to the neutral primes.
So, we see that a prime can influence a person’s choice when that goal is already relevant.
Thirsty people were more likely to favor a thirst-quenching beverage over a nonquenching
beverage when they had been primed subliminally. But, what about choosing one brand of
a thirst-quenching beverage over another? Can consumers be primed with a brand name?
As you know, consumers can be very loyal to particular brands, so much so that the brand
becomes part of their identity. Some people identify themselves as a “Pepsi person” or a “Mac
person.” Among people who have strong brand loyalty, priming a particular brand is unlikely
to influence their behavior. However, when people face choices that do not involve their preferred brand, a subliminal prime might be effective.
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Priming and Marketing
Section 7.3
Figure 7.2: Priming and beverage
choice
People seemed to prefer a “thirst-quenching” beverage
after they have been exposed to words associated with
thirst.
Rating of Sports Drinks
5
Thirst-Related Primes
Neutral Primes
4.5
4
3.5
Super-Quencher
PowerPro
Subliminal Priming Condition
Source: Strahan, E. J., Spencer, S. J., & Zanna, M. P. (2002). Subliminal
priming and persuasion: Striking while the iron is hot. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 556–568. Fig. 2. Published by
Elsevier. Reprinted with permission.
So, you can see that subliminal primes can
influence a person’s choice of a brand, but
only when a goal is already relevant. Also,
the primes likely would be most effective
in situations in which a consumer does
not already have a strong preference for
a particular brand. The studies we’ve just
discussed used words (lexical primes)
mag81516_07_c07_143-162.indd 149
Figure 7.3: Intention to drink
Lipton Ice based on primes
According to this study, choice of brand can be influenced
by related primes when brand loyalty is not a factor.
6
Intention to Drink Lipton Ice
In a follow-up study, the scientists manipulated participants’ thirst by giving half
of them a salty candy to taste, yielding
a 2 × 2 factorial design involving thirst
(thirsty versus not thirsty) and subliminal
prime (Lipton Ice versus control). Then,
all the participants were exposed to one
of the subliminal primes, after which they
were asked to choose between Lipton Ice
and the branded mineral water. As in the
previous experiment, participants who
were thirsty and who had been exposed
to the Lipton Ice brand were more likely
to choose Lipton Ice.
In other words, if you are thirsty and can
choose between a brand of iced tea and a
brand of mineral water, would priming
the tea brand lead you to choose the tea
over the water? To test this possibility,
scientists subliminally primed participants with either the Lipton Ice® brand
or nonsense words (e.g., Npeic Tol) that
were made from the same letters and
were similar in length, which served as
the experiment’s control condition (Karremans, Stroebe, & Claus, 2006). After
this, the participants were asked how
likely they were to choose Lipton Ice and
a brand of mineral water and indicate
how thirsty they felt. Participants who
had been exposed to the Lipton Ice prime
were more likely to choose the tea, if they
were thirsty. That is, the thirstier they
felt, the more likely they were to choose
Lipton Ice. This was not the case for those
who were exposed to the neutral prime
(see Figure 7.3). Also, the Lipton Ice
prime had no effect on people’s intention
to drink the branded water, regardless of
their thirstiness.
Lipton Ice
Prime
5
4
Control
Prime
3
2
1
Low
High
Amount of Thirst
Source: Karremans, J. C., Stroebe, W., & Claus, J. (2006). Beyond Vicary’s
fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 792–798, fig. 1. Published by
Elsevier. Reprinted with permission.06).
8/26/14 4:08 PM
Priming and Marketing
Section 7.3
to test the possibility that subliminal priming could influence consumer behavior. However,
primes do not need to be words. Images, shapes, sounds, and smells might work just as well.
Further, the primes do not need to be subliminal, and neither do they need to be isolated from
other forms of persuasion and social influence.
Multisensory Primes
In 2012, Dunkin’ Donuts® added a coffee smell to its ad campaign in Seoul, South Korea. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbU1jwLgaLQ. Scent dispensers installed on passenger
buses sprayed a coffee fragrance every time a radio ad for Dunkin’ Donuts co …
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