How can you be influenced to think in certain ways? In this activity, we will demonstrate the concept of priming, which is when any previous experiences that you may have had can change how you believe, think, or remember things!
Materials
Activity sheet attached here
A partner!
Time Estimated:
10 minutes
Directions:
One person will be the tester and the other person will be the test-taker.
The tester will take the first page from the activity sheet and keep it out of view.
The tester will then slowly read the list of words from Set A to the test-taker.
After reading all of the words, wait 20 seconds.
Then, the tester will ask the test-taker the questions below the word list, and circle YES or NO depending on what the test-taker answers.
See how you did! The correct answers are in bold. Did we trick you?
Notice what we did? We tried to trick you by asking about similar words to those on the list.
Think you can do better now that you know what is happening? Try the same thing for the second list of words and see how the results change!
Think Like a Scientist!
What happened? Did we trick you? Did you do better the second time?
Did you remember words that were not on the lists? Why do you think you remembered words you didn’t hear?
Would the results have changed if you didn’t have to wait as long before trying to remember the words?
How Does it Work?
The effects of priming are not always very strong. However, when using related words, it is more likely that words that are related will lead to words being incorrectly remembered. While trying to remember words, it is possible that the test-taker recalled words that were also related to the words in Set A, but not actually in Set A due to being primed to think of similar words. For Set B, because the test-taker was warned that they were tricked, it lessens the likelihood of a false memory. For both tests, in order to try to show the effects of priming, we need to make sure that we minimize the recency effect, which is when you remember things at the end of a list because you just heard or saw them. If you tried to recall the words right away, it might have been too easy to remember the words from the lists due to this effect.
Further Exploration:
Using a similar procedure, psychologists have been able to get people to recognize words that weren’t in lists up to 75% of the time! Be aware about how the things around you can make you think!
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