Social Priming Research Articles

Developing and evaluating a brief, socially primed video intervention to enable bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation: A randomised control trial.

Over 30,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the United Kingdom annually, with only 7-8% of patients surviving. One of the most effective methods of improving survival outcomes is bystander intervention in the form of calling the emergency services and initiating chest compressions. Additionally, the public must feel empowered to act and use this knowledge in an emergency. This study aimed to evaluate an ultra-brief CPR familiarisation video that uses empowering social priming language to frame CPR as a norm in Scotland. In a randomised control trial, participants (n = 86) were assigned to view an ultra-brief CPR video intervention or a traditional long-form CPR video intervention. Following completion of a pre-intervention questionnaire examining demographic variables and prior CPR knowledge, participants completed an emergency services-led resuscitation simulation in a portable simulation suite using a CPR manikin that measures resuscitation quality. Participants then completed questionnaires examining social identity and attitudes towards performing CPR. During the simulated resuscitation, the ultra-brief intervention group's cumulative time spent performing chest compressions was significantly higher than that observed in the long-form intervention group. The long-form intervention group's average compressions per minute rate was significantly higher than the ultra-brief intervention group, however both scores fell within a clinically acceptable range. No other differences were observed in CPR quality. Regarding the social identity measures, participants in the ultra-brief condition had greater feelings of expected emergency support from other Scottish people when compared to long-form intervention participants. There were no significant group differences in attitudes towards performing CPR. Socially primed, ultra-brief CPR interventions hold promise as a method of equipping the public with basic resuscitation skills and empowering the viewer to intervene in an emergency. These interventions may be an effective avenue for equipping at-risk groups with resuscitation skills and for supplementing traditional resuscitation training.

Social priming of speech perception: The role of individual differences in implicit racial and ethnic associations.

Social priming of speech perception: The role of individual differences in implicit racial and ethnic associations.

Supplemental Material for Social Priming of Speech Perception: The Role of Individual Differences in Implicit Racial and Ethnic Associations

Supplemental Material for Social Priming of Speech Perception: The Role of Individual Differences in Implicit Racial and Ethnic Associations

Exploring effects of social information on talker-independent accent adaptation.

The present study examined whether race information about speakers can promote rapid and generalizable perceptual adaptation to second-language accent. First-language English listeners were presented with Cantonese-accented English sentences in speech-shaped noise during a training session with three intermixed talkers, followed by a test session with a novel (i.e., fourth) talker. Participants were assigned to view either three East Asian or three White faces during training, corresponding to each speaker. Results indicated no effect of the social priming manipulation on the training or test sessions, although both groups performed better at test than a control group.

Can we change automatic processes: the influence of social priming on alcohol attentional bias.

The Stroop Effect has been linked to social concept priming, suggesting that the latter may trigger automatic behaviour aligned with the primed concept. This study examined the effects of social priming on alcohol attentional bias, with a sample of mostly light drinkers; it used a social priming task and an alcohol-Stroop test to measure participants' response times (RTs) before and after they had been socially primed. Participants were separated into one of three social priming conditions: Neutral, Alcohol Addiction, and Alcohol Preoccupation. A mixed ANOVA was run to determine whether participants' RTs to alcohol-related stimuli, "rather than to neutral sitmuli," slowed significantly after the alcohol interference tasks, relative to the neutral interference task, suggesting an alcohol attentional bias had been induced by the social priming exercise. Key interaction terms did not reveal such an interaction, but rather a general slowing down (for both neutral and alcohol stimuli), in the Alcohol conditions, relative to the Neutral one. As a result, we can conclude that while we did not induce an alcohol-specific bias in participants, we did discover a generalised interference effect, following alcohol-related social priming tasks.

Social Priming: Exploring the Effects of Speaker Race and Ethnicity on Perception of Second Language Accents.

Listeners use more than just acoustic information when processing speech. Social information, such as a speaker's perceived race or ethnicity, can also affect the processing of the speech signal, in some cases facilitating perception ("social priming"). We aimed to replicate and extend this line of inquiry, examining effects of multiple social primes (i.e., a Middle Eastern, White, or East Asian face, or a control silhouette image) on the perception of Mandarin Chinese-accented English and Arabic-accented English. By including uncommon priming combinations (e.g., a Middle Eastern prime for a Mandarin accent), we aimed to test the specificity of social primes: For example, can a Middle Eastern face facilitate perception of both Arabic-accented English and Mandarin-accented English? Contrary to our predictions, our results indicated no facilitative social priming effects for either of the second language (L2) accents. Results for our examination of specificity were mixed. Trends in the data indicated that the combination of an East Asian prime with Arabic accent resulted in lower accuracy as compared with a White prime, but the combination of a Middle Eastern prime with a Mandarin accent did not (and may have actually benefited listeners to some degree). We conclude that the specificity of priming effects may depend on listeners' level of familiarity with a given accent and/or racial/ethnic group and that the mixed outcomes in the current work motivate further inquiries to determine whether social priming effects for L2-accented speech may be smaller than previously hypothesized and/or highly dependent on listener experience.

Social contagion in employees’ assessment of work-life practices: a framework of social contagion processes, assessment dimensions, and national context

ABSTRACT Although employees increasingly need support to reconcile work and family, many lack a thorough knowledge of work-life practices such as flexible work arrangements, leaves, and dependent care programs, or they hesitate to use them. Building on social network and social contagion research, this paper argues that employees assess work-life practices not in isolation but through relational processes of social priming, social influence, and social comparison. I delineate six dimensions along which employees assess work-life practices–visibility, relevance, employer's motivations, instrumentality, fairness, and relative generosity–and analyze social contagion processes in networks of strong and weak ties, expressive and instrumental ties, within and outside the organization. I then examine how the national context may intervene in these processes by making the information that flows across ties more or less gender normative and by setting employees’ expectations for employer work-life support.

Social Priming in Speech Perception: Revisiting Kangaroo/Kiwi Priming in New Zealand English

We investigate whether regionally-associated primes can affect speech perception in two lexical decision tasks in which New Zealand listeners were exposed to an Australian prime (a kangaroo), a New Zealand prime (a kiwi), and/or a control animal (a horse). The target stimuli involve ambiguous vowels, embedded in a frame that would result in a real word with a KIT or a DRESS vowel and a nonsense word with the alternative vowel; thus, lexical decision responses can reveal which vowel was heard. Our pre-registered design predicted that exposure to the kangaroo would elicit more KIT-consistent responses than exposure to the kiwi. Both experiments showed significant priming effects in which the kangaroo elicited more KIT-consistent responses than the kiwi. The particular locus and details of these effects differed across experiments and participants. Taken together, the experiments reinforce the finding that regionally-associated primes can affect speech perception, but also suggest that the effects are sensitive to experimental design, stimulus acoustics, and individuals’ production and past experience.

No news is good news: Social priming and the intelligibility of American-accented English

Social information, such as a speaker’s race, can affect the perception of speech. In some cases, these social primes facilitate perception, while in others they can lead to reduced speech intelligibility. For example, a picture of an East Asian face may facilitate perception of Mandarin Chinese-accented English but interfere with perception of American-accented English. Using a large sample recruited online, we aimed to test whether there is a link between implicit racial associations and the effects of social primes on the perception of American-accented English. We examined priming for a White versus an East Asian prime and for a White versus a Latina prime. In both cases, the difference between priming conditions was non-significant. Subjects also completed two implicit association tests, examining associations of these races/ethnicities with the constructs American versus Foreign and Good versus Bad. Individual differences in implicit associations did not predict social priming for either cohort. However, in some cases they did predict overall performance on the speech perception task. We discuss how these findings diverge from prior work on multiple accounts, and how consideration of the racial and linguistic diversity of listeners’ interpersonal networks may improve our understanding of individual differences in social priming susceptibility.

Social Class Priming Effect on Prosociality: Evidence from Explicit and Implicit Measures

Although abundant research has explored the relationship between social class and prosociality, it remains controversial. This study aimed to investigate the effect of social class priming on prosociality among college students. Experiment 1 was an explicit experiment in which we employed the MacArthur scale to prime participants’ social class and then used a donation task. The results showed that students in a low social class priming group had more donation behaviors compared to ones in a high social class priming group. Experiment 2 was an implicit experiment in which we used a single category implicit association test (SC-IAT) to investigate the relationship between the self-concepts of different social classes and prosociality after priming participants’ social class. The results indicated that students in a low social class priming condition had a stronger connection between self-concepts and prosocial inclinations than ones in a high social class priming condition. Thus, our study demonstrated that students primed with low social class were more prosocial than those primed with high social class, and supported the empathy-altruism theory of prosocial behavior. These findings are of great practical significance to promote prosocial behavior of individuals of different social classes.

Social Stimulation by the Owner Increases Dogs' (Canis familiaris) Social Susceptibility in a Food Choice Task-The Possible Effect of Endogenous Oxytocin Release.

Simple SummaryIntranasal administration of oxytocin has been proposed to be an effective way of improving several socio-cognitive skills in humans. There is evidence that dogs show human-analogue social behaviours and socio-cognitive capacities. Furthermore, recent studies have demonstrated that the oxytocin system is related to human-directed social behaviour in dogs. Some human studies suggest that pre-treatment with social stimuli (eye contact, touch) has similar behavioural effects because these cues stimulate oxytocin release. In the present study, we show that both social stimulation by the owner as well as intranasal oxytocin administration increases dogs’ social susceptibility in a food choice task. This means that dogs after both treatments (as compared to control conditions) were more prone to conforming to a human demonstrator’s counterproductive choice (smaller amount of food), giving up their natural preference. These results highlight important mechanisms of social tuning between dogs and humans.Recent evidence suggests a human-like susceptibility to social influence in dogs. For example, dogs tend to ignore their ‘natural’ preference for the larger amount of food after having seen a human’s explicit preference for a smaller quantity. However, it is still unclear whether this tendency to conform to the partner’s behaviour can be influenced by social stimuli and/or the neurohormone oxytocin as primers to prosocial predispositions. In Experiment I, eighty two dogs were tested using Prato-Previde et al.’s food quantity preference task. In Experiment I, we investigated in a 2 × 2 design how (i) a 10-minute-long social stimulation by the owner versus a socially ignoring pre-treatment as well as (ii) on-line ostensive communications versus no communication during task demonstration affect dogs’ (N = 82) choices in the abovementioned food choice task. Results indicate that the owners’ pre-treatment with social stimuli (eye contact, petting) increased dogs’ susceptibility to the experimenter’s food preference, but the salient ostensive addressing signals accompanying human demonstration masked this social priming effect. In Experiment II, N = 32 dogs from the subjects of Experiment I were retested after oxytocin (OT) or placebo (PL) pre-treatments. This experiment aimed to study whether intranasal administration of oxytocin as compared to placebo treatment would similarly increase dogs’ tendency to re-enact the human demonstrator’s counterproductive choice in the same task. Results showed an increased susceptibility to the human preference in the OT group, suggesting that both socially stimulating pre-treatment and the intranasal administration of oxytocin have similar priming effects on dogs’ social susceptibility.

Can Priming Multiple Identities Enhance Divergent Thinking for Middle School Students?

Previous studies have found that promoting multiple identities can improve children’s creative performance (divergent thinking). The present study employed a priming paradigm to design two experiments and investigate whether promoting a sense of multiple identities in middle school students could enhance their divergent thinking, a key component of creativity. In Experiment 1, 77 junior high school students were divided into multiple identities and physical trait condition groups. They were instructed to think about a child with multiple identities or physical traits. The results showed that there were no differences in divergent thinking (DT) scores between the two groups. In Experiment 2, we modified the priming method by asking participants to think about and write a description of the various identities or physical traits and employed a subjective top-scoring method to make up for shortcomings in the traditional scoring method when applied to originality. The results still showed no significant difference in scores between the identity and physical trait groups. Thus, the results of this study contradict those of previous research, which found that the identity group demonstrated significantly higher scores on a creativity test than did those in the physical trait group. Several potential factors affect this outcome, but it seems that priming to enhance divergent thinking is not particularly effective. Thus, the social priming effect should be pursued with caution regarding both replicability and generalizability.

Social priming for nonnative-accented speech

Prior work indicates that a speaker’s race/ethnicity can prime a listener to expect native versus nonnative (foreign) accents. In the present study, we replicate the findings of McGowan (2015) and then address novel topics including the effect of social primes on perceptual adaptation. Using a matched-guise design, we examined the effect of race information on the perception of, and adaptation to, Mandarin Chinese-accented English in babble. Subjects randomly assigned an East Asian female’s face during the speech perception task showed an advantage over subjects assigned a White female’s face or a silhouette (control) face (as measured by transcription accuracy). Performance across trials indicated that although subjects in the control group initially perform worse than those in the East Asian prime group, they perceptually adapt more rapidly to the Mandarin accent, eventually reaching a similar level of performance. Subjects in the White prime group, however, do not adapt as rapidly as those in the control group. In a second experiment, we aim to expand on this work by examining similar priming effects for Arabic-accented English (with Middle Eastern, White, or control primes), and uncommon combinations of minority race/ethnicity primes with nonnative accents (e.g., an East Asian face with an Arabic accent).

Social Ties and Money Priming in Bargaining Games and the Prisoner‘s Dilemma

The authors examine the effects of money priming and solidarity on individual behavior in three simple games: dictator, ultimatum, and prisoner's dilemma game. In three consecutive experiments, they use two different money treatments and two neutral (control) treatments. Additionally, they vary the strength of social ties between participants by conducting experiments with students from a military university and a regular university. Although the priming procedure is sufficient to remind people of the concept of money, it is not sufficient to induce systematically different behavior of the treatment groups compared to the control groups. They find significant differences between groups with strong and weak social ties, even without activating the idea of group affiliation. They discuss various explanations of why the results seem to contradict previous research on money priming.

Perceiving faces through reconnection-colored glasses after social exclusion: Evidence from N100.

Social exclusion motivates individuals to selectively reconnect with others, in which face categorization plays an important role. However, it remains unknown how reconnection possibility interacts with perception at the very early stage of face categorization. To address this issue, after social exclusion or social inclusion priming, participants were instructed to select one person from two gender-matched strangers as a future "coworker" (with high reconnection possibility; the left one is a future "stranger," with low reconnection possibility) for another ostensible task, and then complete an orientation judgment task of self-face, coworker face and stranger face, with event-related brain potential (ERP) recordings. Results showed that excluded participants produced larger N100 to future coworker face than to stranger face, but no such difference was found among included participants. Compared with included participants, excluded participants produced significantly larger N100 to future coworker face. Moreover, N100 elicited by future coworker face was significantly negatively correlated with rating scores of exclusion only for social excluded participants. These findings indicate that social reconnection desire may contribute to the biased face perception which facilitates face categorization of socially excluded people.

Social priming influences the perception of a virtual audience: Exploratory study

Virtual reality is an effective therapeutic tool in many psychiatric disorders. However, some patients are not very sensitive to these new treatments due to a difficulty in considering these virtual environments as plausible. The aim of this study is to evaluate the influence of conceptual priming on the perception of virtual environments in healthy participants. We primed participants with a pro-social, non-social or anti-social priming. The participants then had to present themselves for 2 min to an audience of avatars in a virtual amphitheater. We used the ITC-SOPI and the Presence scale to assess participants’ perception of the environments. Our results suggest that there are significant differences between the three priming conditions concerning the perception scale (F(2,75) = 4.579; p = 0.013). More specifically, the pro-social condition significantly favours the positive perception of a virtual audience compared to the anti-social condition (respectively: Mean = 33.31 / SD = 8.76; Mean = 25.38 / SD = 9.26; t = 3.249; p = 0.005). This study shows that an experimental priming task can influence the perception of an environment in virtual reality. Experimental priming can become a very interesting tool for maximizing the therapeutic effects of virtual reality in patients who are not very sensitive to digital tools.

USING TASK PRACTICE TO REDUCE SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON LISTENER EVALUATIONS OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACCENT AND COMPREHENSIBILITY

ABSTRACT This study examined whether task practice can reduce social influences (operationalized in terms of positive or negative social priming) on listener-based evaluations of second language (L2) speech. Seventy English–French bilingual listeners evaluated audio-recorded picture narratives made by 40 French speakers of L2 English for accent and comprehensibility. Before rating the narratives, 40 listeners engaged in task practice by completing the same speech production task as the L2 speakers in English (20) or French (20) and then experienced a social priming intervention (10 negative, 10 positive per group). An additional 30 baseline listeners evaluated the same narratives without engaging in any task practice and with either negative (10), positive (10), or no social priming (10) imposed. English task practice mitigated social influences on listener assessments of both accent and comprehensibility, but only under negative priming. Engaging listeners in task practice, particularly in their stronger language, can reduce social influences on listener-based assessments of L2 speech.

Social priming or not? Investigating generalizability via individual variation

Although the effects of social priming-where social information about a speaker influences linguistic decisions-have long been accepted (e.g., Niedzielski, 1999; Strand, 1999; Hay et al., 2006), recent studies call attention to a lack of generalizability across contexts (e.g., Lawrence, 2015; Chang, 2017; Walker et al., 2019). The current study finds that social priming, in the case of /a℧/-raising in Michigan and Canadian English, is primarily observed for individuals who scored high on both stereotype awareness and cognitive perspective-taking, suggesting that aspects of both the sociolinguistic context and participant sampling can impact when and why social priming effects do not occur.

“Social Priming” Through the Lens of Sociology of Science: Fuzzy Boundary, Personal Experience, and Broader Atmosphere

Sherman and Rivers (this issue) provide a helpful recent-historical perspective on the term “social priming” and the body of work it’s supposed to label. They put their finger on experimental desig...

A Final Word on Train Wrecks

We identify the main themes raised in the commentaries and respond. To summarize: Yes, there were problems with social priming (and most other psychological) research; yes, the definition of social priming matters; no, cherry-picking specific studies to replicate does not amount to a systematic examination of the relevant research; yes, within-subjects social priming studies are robust; yes, it is wrong to conflate research reproducibility and misconduct; and, yes, it was personal.