The Reality Distortion Field Is Real

TimeZone writes "Apparently, even subliminal exposure to the Apple logo can make you 'think different.' Researchers at Duke University subjected participants to subliminal images of the iconic Apple and IBM logos (during what subjects thought was a visual acuity test), and those who were shown the Apple logo generated more creative ideas after the test than did those who were shown the IBM logo. In a second test, subjects exposed to the Disney logo acted more honestly than those who saw an E! Channel logo." Here's a preprint of the paper (PDF) due for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Comments

Experiment 1 is flawed....

[Ardeaem]

As a researcher doing research in the field of subliminal perception, I read their preprint with interest. However, their experiment 1 is flawed. The did the IBM and Apple priming tasks on DIFFERENT DAYS. Which days, they do not say, but it is likely that there are differences in days of the week with respect to how "creative" people are. In my research, we fail to detect any subliminal effects of the type discussed here - the literature is full of methodological problems. I suspect their effect is a methodological artifact, as well.

They don't mention whether exps 2 and 3 were done on different days, but given that they did it for expt 1, they probably did for 2 and 3 too.

Re:To summarize then...

[Ieshan]

Well, you could read their intro for a more in-depth analysis and discussion of priming, but I wouldn't call it a suggestion so much as I would call it bias to act in a certain way.

The basic idea behind priming is that there is a large interconnected network of information and that activating one piece of information partially "boosts" other connected pieces of information. When you are prompted to act in new tasks, you have a higher likelihood to engage in actions that have this extra "boost" in activation.

Geek Priming Example:
In geek terminology, it's something like this. Suppose you were Google, and imagine you were designing a system to deliver targeted advertising to people. You had thousands of possible ads you could show someone, but you want the advertising to be more specific.

Lets say you were choosing between just two companies that want to sell advertising today. One of these companies is called "Joe's Fisheries", and they have a special on Sole (a kind of fish). One of these companies is called "Joe's Shoe Supply", and they've got a special on Sole Repair (the bottom of your shoes).

You might intercept an email about Soles, but you're not sure which sole it is. You don't want to be selling Fish to guys who need shoe repair, and you don't want to be selling Shoes to guys who want fish. On the other hand, other words in the email tell you if it's about shoes (like laces, or boots) and other words tell you if it's about fish (scales, salmon, whatever).

Whatever your way of deciding is, you probabilistically weight Fish over Shoe (or vice versa) depending on some other cues. Then you show the ad you think is most appropriate.

In a priming study, basically what they're doing is providing some bogus information to your same cortical networks that weight and categorize information. They're feeding you stimuli (like "scales", and "salmon"), and when they ask you to use the word Sole in a sentence, you say something like, "Gee, I could really go for a nice filet of sole", rather than "I hate it when gum sticks in the Sole of my shoe".

Mostly, these primes only affect the way you behave in either carefully constructed follow-up tasks, usually ones that require you to categorize or manipulate information. A classic example is something like Word Completion, for example:
"SOL_".

I'm sure you filled in "Sole" even though you could have put in "Solo" and "Sold", far more common words.

See! You can be primed too!