“Social priming” has been the punching-bag of psychology for the past few years.
The term “social priming” refers to the idea that subtle cues can exert large, unconscious influences on human behaviour. The classic example of a social priming effect was the “professor priming” study in which volunteers who completed a task in which they had to describe a typical professor, subsequently performed better on a general knowledge task. In other words, as the authors put it, “priming a stereotype or trait leads to complex overt behavior in line with this activated stereotype or trait.”
