Priming Influences How We Decide to Spend Time
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
Priming is a powerful psychological technique. It involves exposure to a specific stimulus (often repeatedly), a short delay and then the completion of a task. How you complete the task is influenced by the stimulus which “primes you” to act in a certain way. You have an implicit memory of the stimulus which is used to complete the task. It can be surprising powerful especially when the priming stimulus is carefully selected and we are doing the task in automatic mode.
For example, a recent research study from the University of Pennsylvania found that priming can influence how we decide to spend our time. For specifics see, Thoughts About Time Inspire People to Socialize:
“A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are made to think about time plan to spend more of their time with the people in their lives while people who think about money fill their schedules with work, work, and—you guessed it—more work.”
Being primed to think about time influences a decision to socialize versus a prime about money which influences a decision to work. This effect was found in both a lab and real world setting.
