Research on priming was described in "Reading Reports Involving Risk-taking Affects Financial Decision Making" (Science Daily). What's priming? From the SD article:
Priming is a known psychological phenomenon, influencing memory retrieval processes by exposure to different stimuli. Dr. Kliger explains: "Consider, for example, a situation where you have returned home after watching a horror movie. While climbing the stairs, you hear the garden gate creaking. A common fear under such circumstances might be that there is a burglar outside. Hearing the same sound after returning from a tedious workday at the office, if noticing it at all, one would probably interpret it in a banal way – 'Woops, forgot the cat outside again'. In this example, the horror movie is the priming substance, affecting subsequent behavior."
One way to lessen the effects of priming is metacognition, thinking about your thinking. Jonah Lehrer recommends metacognition as one of the best ways to improve your decision making. I agree.
Along these lines, I just read Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. (More about the book.) If you read the book and pay heed to the author Winifred Gallagher's message, you will be walking down the road towards improved metacognition and prime proofing yourself.
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