How often have you fallen prey to advertising tactics? You would perhaps recall few to no such instances. This is a very predictable and systematic error in human cognition—we rely on environmental cues more than one would think. One such phenomenon is known as the priming effect wherein an individual’s exposure to a certain stimulus influences their response to a subsequent stimulus without their conscious knowledge. It happens during the preattention stage and often goes unnoticed but has large implications on human decision-making and judgment. For example, people are induced to buy more food at the grocery store as a result of subtly filling the store with the smell of freshly baked bread. The main difference between individuals lies in how long this effect lasts, but it happens to the best of us. Priming has evolved in the human species to save us from danger, think faster, and make quick decisions in a limited time. Therefore, this mechanism helped us survive for thousands of years but social scientists have started being wary of the effects of priming and how it can be misused.
Abuse of human psychology could potentially have dire consequences and pave the way for an Orwellian totalitarian state. Psychological persuasion of the masses was used to alter the beliefs and attitudes of citizens in the first and the second world war, in order to stir them into action. Tactful war posters were used to evoke fear and patriotism in people and this strong emotion was used to suppress critical thinking and instill cooperation by respective citizens. Apart from visual priming, the method of repetition priming has also been used in war propaganda. The press reported gory details of killing infants and making lines of fascism with dead babies in Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990. This was all a media tactic to mobilize people into aligning their beliefs with that of the government. Hyperbole and the use of painful and emotionally detailed facts was seen to entice people. Therefore, the simple method of framing messages and censoring contradictory evidence could potentially perpetuate a war. These psychologically informed war propagandists abused an innocent marketing strategy for their own personal agenda. So, how far away are we from history repeating itself? Can advertising, instead, take complete control over the human mind in a fairly democratic world?
Contrary to hysterical claims of ‘hidden persuaders’ manipulating our minds in the late 1950s, social scientists have discovered a more realistic impact of priming—it is limited and highly varied across time and individuals. Priming can only activate pre-existing goal pursuits in people rather than create new ones. For example, in a study participants were presented with angry, neutral, and happy faces. Thirsty participants who saw happy faces were more likely to drink a fruit-flavored drink compared to participants who saw angry faces. Non-thirsty participants were completely unaffected by the priming cues. Therefore, even if priming effects are automatic, fast, and passive, they have to be consistent with an individual’s long-term goals. Research indicates that individual differences in chronic awareness of one’s internal states also reduce priming effects. In that sense, stable internal states work as independent drivers of behavior and inhibit the effects of priming.
Through this, we understand that the environment cannot claim complete control over our minds as long as personal agency and individual freedom are intact. There are also various individual differences at play that obstruct the omnipresent force of priming. People with a stronger self-concept are less likely to be influenced by a prime. Moreover, individuals who consider their ‘self’ to be immutable, are relatively unaffected compared to people who are uncertain of their ‘self’. It is not the environment that makes the individual but the combination of both that makes a unique human.
Swaranjali Sharma
