Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2013 Apr 24;8(4):e56515. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056515. Print 2013.
Can behavior be unconsciously primed via the activation of attitudes, stereotypes, or other concepts? A number of studies have suggested that such priming effects can occur, and a prominent illustration is the claim that individuals' accuracy in answering general knowledge questions can be influenced by activating intelligence-related concepts such as professor or soccer hooligan. In 9 experiments with 475 participants we employed the procedures used in these studies, as well as a number of variants of those procedures, in an attempt to obtain this intelligence priming effect. None of the experiments obtained the effect, although financial incentives did boost performance. A Bayesian analysis reveals considerable evidential support for the null hypothesis. The results conform to the pattern typically obtained in word priming experiments in which priming is very narrow in its generalization and unconscious (subliminal) influences, if they occur at all, are extremely short-lived. We encourage others to explore the circumstances in which this phenomenon might be obtained.
行为能否通过态度、刻板印象或其他概念的激活而无意识地产生启动效应？许多研究表明，这种启动效应是可能存在的，一个突出的例子是，声称个体回答一般知识问题的准确性可以通过激活与智力相关的概念来影响，例如教授或足球流氓。在 9 项实验中，共有 475 名参与者，我们采用了这些研究中使用的程序，以及这些程序的一些变体，试图获得这种智力启动效应。虽然经济激励确实提高了表现，但没有一项实验获得了这种效应。贝叶斯分析为零假设提供了相当多的证据支持。结果符合典型的单词启动实验模式，即启动效应的泛化非常狭窄，如果存在无意识（潜意识）影响，它们也会非常短暂。我们鼓励其他人探索在何种情况下可能会出现这种现象。
