This interesting piece of research suggests that a particular kind of goal setting can keep you on track, even if you are unconsciously subjected to priming.
Abstract of "Self-Regulation of Priming Effects on Behavior" (Psychological Science):
In three experiments, we tested whether people can protect their ongoing goal pursuits from antagonistic priming effects by using if-then plans (i.e., implementation intentions). In Experiment 1, concept priming did not influence lexical decision time for a critical stimulus when participants had formed if-then plans to make fast responses to that stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants who were primed with a prosocial goal allowed a confederate who asked for help to interrupt their work on a focal task for a longer time if they had merely formed goal intentions to perform well than if they had also formed implementation intentions for concentrating on the task. In Experiment 3, priming the goal of being fast increased driving speed and errors for participants who had formed mere goal intentions to drive only as fast as safety allowed or who had formed no goal intentions, whereas the driving of participants who had formed such goal intentions as well as implementation intentions showed no such priming effects. Our findings indicate that implementation intentions are an effective self-regulatory tool for shielding actions from disruptive concept- or goal-priming effects.
Excerpt:
Numerous studies have shown that behaviors can be primed outside of conscious awareness (see reviews by Bargh, 2006; Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010). Although it is highly functional that behaviors can be initiated and run to completion without conscious attention and guidance (e.g., people may drive especially carefully when taking their children to school), situational cues sometimes activate behaviors that are at odds with how people consciously intend to behave (e.g., they may drive too quickly after watching the Formula One Grand Prix). In the present research, we examined a self-regulatory tool that may help people control such unwanted behavior-priming effects. Specifically, we tested whether spelling out the when, where, and how of an intended course of action (i.e., forming implementation intentions; Gollwitzer, 1993, 1999) protects performance from intrusive behavior priming.
Two routes to behavior priming have been studied (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Förster, Liberman, & Friedman, 2009). The first is concept priming (the “perception-behavior expressway”; Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001), which causes people to act in line with activated concepts, such as “intelligent” or “warm.” Because perception and action overlap, concept priming causes people to act in accordance with the primed concepts (the common-coding hypothesis; Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001). For instance, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) found that activating the concept “elderly” made participants walk more slowly when they left the laboratory.
The second route to behavior priming involves activating mental representations of goals (Bargh, 1990; Chartrand & Bargh, 1996; Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010). Past experiences forge associations between situations, representations of goals, and the behavioral means used to attain those goals. Thus, situational cues can activate goals and subsequent goal striving. For instance, Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, and Trötschel (2001) observed that priming achievement goals improved performance on intellectual tasks, enhanced persistence in the face of obstacles, and promoted resumption rates after interruptions—all indicators of effective goal striving (Lewin, 1935; Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001).
Self-regulation of behavior-priming effects is difficult because, by definition, people do not realize when priming affects their behavior (Oettingen, Grant, Smith, Skinner, & Gollwitzer, 2006; Wilson & Brekke, 1984). So, what can people do to protect their consciously intended behaviors from antagonistic behavior-priming effects? ...
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Thanks for the link!
Posted by: Todd I. Stark | June 11, 2011 at 01:34 PM