We all have played the game called Rapid-Fire once or more in our life. It is the most played game in any party say, teacher’s day party or bachelors. We have to say a word associated with the word which host has said. Immediately after listening to a word, our mind associates that word with our past experiences or the thing we associate that word with. It is due to the Priming. Priming is the psychological term in which the stimulus influences the respond of the responder. For instance, when we say the color apple, it will evoke a faster response to the red color, Fruit apple or Apple’s iPhone, depending upon the person’s association with that particular word.
What exactly is Priming?
Priming is the psychological phenomenon in which the exposure of the stimuli influences the behavior of the individual, without even letting individual aware that the first thing they listened or got exposed with has influenced their behavior or answer.
Priming is how tiny cues and stimuli around us can subconsciously (and significantly) affect our behavior, and the stimuli can be a word, image, sound, smell, taste, and even a physical movement. Now let’s understand how priming influences our behavior daily.
1. Successful Role Models (Power Posing) make us Act Bold
Whenever we see the image of our role model or a power pose of any of our inspiration, it influences our behavior to act more strongly and motivate us to perform better. The most relevant example to this is women empowerment, Whenever we see the successful women governing the country, or any other firm, it influences the behavior of the women to speak, feel and to lead more effectively. Also, whenever we see somebody standing with his/her hand on his/her waist, we directly can feel that they are powerful because of their actions. So to show power, we usually keep our hands on our waist and stand straight.
2. Facial expressions influencing behavior
Human facial expressions are important social signals in our everyday life. Whenever we see a smiling face or emoji or any other image, it automatically influences our behavior.
3. Revision
After completing our exam, we are always advised by our teachers to revise the answer sheet before submitting it. We are always taught that revising can improve our marks because when we revise, we can find out mistakes done by us while writing the answers.
4. Advertisements
If you’re a marketer/advertiser, you’ve probably figured out that you are told for psychological manipulation when going out in the field. And if you are a consumer, just a second after spending some money on their product, you might have felt how the salesman had manipulated your mind. Priming is a technique in which consumer unconsciously make some relation of the product with color/image /sound of the advertisement. For example, when we see the posters of red color, we immediately relate this color with horror/blood/love, etc. because red is often used to advise horror/violent/ love movies.
5. Word Completion
Most of us must have experienced word completion competition once or more during our school days. For example, we are given the fill-in; D__K; which can be completed to DARK or DORK. Participants responses are dependent not only on whether they had read the word earlier but also by the thematic scheme of the words. For example, if they had read the words NIGHT, MOON and SLEEP, they would be more likely to complete it as DARK.
6. For Amnesic Patients
Priming is also used is medical-psychiatry field. Amnesia is a psychiatric disorder in which the patient has difficulty remembering daily events due to damage caused to their medial temporal lobe. It is found that they perform as well as the normal person who has a full memory capacity when it comes to perceptual priming. For instance, in the word completion task, priming enables the patient to complete it successfully, but in the absence of priming they are unable to complete the task
7. Mantras associated with Yoga
We are often asked to recite mantras while doing yoga. The mantra is the stimulus that precedes the positive feelings associated with yoga. The mantras are meant to elicit good feelings and stress relief, and they prime the practitioner for the positivity. Using positive quotes to reinforce positive behavior priming is part of the process. Each time the quote is repeated the stimulus for positive thoughts works to recall positive associations that have been made before when the quote was read.
8. In The Classroom
Before starting the new lecture, our teacher always set a context or give us an overview of the topic. It is to prepare the student’s mind about the topic and to provide him with the main idea of what they are going to study. When we provide an overview of the student, most of them may have focused their attention on the same things you hoped they would-The end result.
