Priming

Had been reading a book called “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, which suggested a few interesting ideas (I’m only on the second part so far, but it’s already quite thrilling). Johanna said that she disliked books of this type, but I dig them because they are what the general public reads, therefore, something that I need to read (meaning, I will soon be reading Harry Potter as well). It was a book suggested by Tom Sanders in his book “Love is the Killer App” which was also a fascinating book (I’m about to finish that one today).

There was a concept of “priming” suggested by Gladwell which concerns psychological experimentation using suggestive words. As Gladwell proposed, it seems that we are often effected far more by first impressions and unconscious decisions that we previously assume (I’ll come back to “snap judgment” some other time). “Priming” suggests that by reading materials containing certain words, such as “old”, “aged”, “death”, we tune our minds to think towards that directions. In one experiment, subjects were separated into two groups, each group given a text containing 2 different categories of words. One category was of more negative suggestions: anxious, impatients, anger, and so on. The other category suggested the opposite: patients, peacefulness, negotiation, and so on. The subjects are then shown one by one towards a room down the hallway where one of their confederates (a placed subject) is talking to one of the experimentors by the door through which they were to enter. The experiment relies on how long it will take before these subjects interrupt the conversation of these two people. As it turned out, subjects from the negative word group were more likely to interrupt with less politeness around 5 minutes into their waiting. As for the subjects of the other group, they are likely to wait up to 10 minutes and the only reason they did not wait longer was because the experiment was limited to only 10 minutes in total (the subjects did not know). But this priming only works under the premises that we do not know we are being primed.

This concept of “priming” seems interesting for me at the moment. We all know, and acknowledge that it is important how we treat each other because our treatments of others can easily effect their reaction and our interactions. Yet, to what extent were we able, willing to understand that? Referring back to a conversation I had with Niko previously about masks, (which I perhaps will also discuss later), are masks truely masks, or are they necessities?

If “priming” is so important, then perhaps the people we hang around with become more important as well. If we are constantly around people who project towards us a negative view or negative languages, then no matter how they try to convince us otherwise later, it will be unconsciously impossible for us to understand / accept. If we are constantly under negative impression of ourselves, or negative “priming” of ourselves and our attitude towards others, then no matter how much we try to hide that it will flow out of our unconscious into every basic gesture we have and through that into other people’s unconscious understanding.

Hence –> THINK POSITIVE!
(So, why are there still people asking me why I laugh all the time =.=)