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- [00:01]
Phil Agnew
In front of me, I've got possibly the best known book on business, psychology and behavioural science. It's written by a Nobel Prize winner, the late great Daniel Kahneman. This book, many of you probably guess what it is. It is fantastic. It sparked really global interest in behavioural science. It motivated hundreds of researchers, authors and even me to create this very podcast. And yet, just a few chapters into this seminal book, you will find a chapter called the Marvels of priming. At 35 points in this book, Kahneman explains how effective priming is. How this subtle tactic can influence how people walk, how creative they are, and even how guilty they feel. When I first read about priming, I was. I was quite gobsmacked. These findings, they sound so incredible. I learned that just seeing the color green on a website can make people spend more. I read that just looking at the Apple logo can make someone more creative. How thinking about a salad can make a cheesecake seem healthier. These findings were incredible, but they were also a bit hard to believe. And that was for good reason. Shortly after releasing the book Thinking Fast and Slow, Researcher Doyen failed to replicate one of the most prominent studies featured in Kahneman's chapter on priming. A follow up larger study by three researchers for the site Replicability Index and analysed all 12 studies in Kahneman's chapter on priming and found that 11 were unreliable. Kahneman himself quickly published an open email addressing the issues. He wrote that while he was a general believer in the psychology of priming, he feared it was a train wreck waiting to happen. And he was right. These original studies on priming have been widely disproven. And yet today, and yet today, I think there's still a near endless number of marketing gurus promoting it. Hi everyone. Etjanis here and in this video. In this video we will explore what is priming and how we can take advantage of it. Some videos like the following call priming the most powerful tool to influence anyone. It only takes a small trigger, a word, a concept, a sensory stimulus to subtly influence our behavior at an unconscious level. And some gurus train their followers to use priming to manipulate others. In this video I'm going to explain how you can use psychological priming to manipulate other people. Priming remains an incredibly popular concept in business marketing and persuasion. But I wanted to figure out if any of these principles actually work. Rather than relying on theoretical papers or lab based studies, I wanted to run my own test with Brits. So I got in touch with my friends at Voxpopme and we ran experiments on 60 random British people. Does priming actually work or is it pure myth? Find out in today's episode of Nudge. If you're in marketing, sales or leadership and you're serious about staying ahead, mark your calendar for for inbound 2025. Happening September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone center in San Francisco. Inbound is genuinely, I think, one of the best major marketing sales leaderships events. I went last year and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. But this year looks even better. The speaker lineup is genuinely world class. They've got Amy Poehler, Dario Amodei, Sean Evans from the hot ones YouTube channel. I'm a big fan of that. Plus Marques Brownlee, Glennon Doyle, Dominique Crenn, and Mike Benson, the CMO of cbs. An incredible lineup and over three days you'll get evidence backed strategies for marketing, leadership and growth. It's delivered by people who shape the future of business and practitioners. I know Nancy Harhurt, former guest on Nudge, will be there as well, and if her talk is anything to go by, this conference will have no fluff, it'll have no filler, it'll just have insights that you can actually use to improve your work. And it's in San Francisco. You got the tech scene as the backdrop. It's the ideal place to explore how AI and behavioral science are reshaping the industry. So if you want to be part of it, if you want to head along, go to inbound.com register to secure your spot. To put priming to the test, I got in touch with Tom at voxpopme. Voxpopme helps brands and agencies learn from customers using video surveys. It's really an incredibly fast and easy way to ask thousands of people a question and get informative, qualitative results. So using Voxpopme, I recruited 60 random British people. I tested five different priming principles on them and I recorded the results. Now, I should caveat that this test isn't scientifically validated or peer reviewed. I'm not a professional researcher, but I am a suspicious behavioral science fan and I'm pretty desperate to put these priming studies to to the test. My studies aren't as robust as I could possibly make them. They're not the same as what you would read in a scientific paper. And yet, that said, I think you'll find the results fairly interesting. I think you'll find it interesting to see how I've set up these studies and the sort of results I got back. For the first part of my experiment, I tested a 1996 study by Bargue, Shen and Barrows. This study was on priming and politeness. They found in their paper that exposing participants to words about politeness, words like respect, honour and authenticity. Well, these words, if you were just exposed to them, it would change participants behavior and perception. When the participants heard those words in the introduction to the study, they apparently waited significantly longer before interrupting the researcher. See, the researcher in this task would talk at length after the experiment was over, at a time when the researchers knew the participant needed to leave. However, those who were primed to think about politeness, who were told these words like respect and honour and authenticity, well, they were apparently far less likely to interrupt the researcher and say I need to leave. Instead, they calmly sat in the lab and waited while the researcher harped on those not primed, stood up, immediately apologised and they left much earlier. This sounds like a fantastic study, doesn't it? If you want someone to be polite, just prime them with polite words. Tell someone to be authentic and perhaps they'll perceive themselves as more authentic. So I wanted to put this to the test. I couldn't replicate this study entirely as I'd be conducting all of my research online. So rather than seeing if someone would interrupt me, I asked 60 British people, how accurately do you present your life on social media? Half in my control group saw just this question. The other half were first primed with the following message. Before we move on, I should mention that most people try to present themselves authentically, even on social media, where things are often curated. If priming worked, using that word, using the word authentically should prime them to view their social media usage as accurately portraying their life. But did it? Well, no, not at all. Those primed with the word authentically actually said they were less authentic online. They said they were 9% less likely to present their life as extremely accurate on social media and 10% more likely to say their social media usage is not very authentic. You can see the full results to this study in the show notes that one word, it didn't change perception at all, which goes against what Bargue, Chen and Burroughs found in that 1996 study on politeness. But that is just one test. It's hardly enough to debunk priming. And honestly, I really wasn't happy with that test. It didn't closely match the 1996 study, so I'm not sure how much you can take away from it. The single word prime didn't make a difference, but that's hardly conclusive. So I wanted to test an Even more surprising finding. This finding suggests that looking at a brand logo can make you more creative. Researchers in a 2008 study titled Apple Makes yous Think different subliminally primed people with either the Apple logo, a famously creative company, or the IBM logo, a famously, at least according to the researchers, a famously non creative company. These logos were only displayed in their study for 13 milliseconds, so people weren't even consciously aware of being exposed to those logos. However, the people who were flashed the Apple logo exhibited higher creativity than those who were exposed to the IBM logo. To measure creativity, they asked people to come up with as many novel uses for a brick as possible. This is actually quite a normal way to measure creativity in these studies anyway. Apparently, those primed with the Apple logo came up with significantly more uses for bricks than those primed with the IBM logo. I think this is one of those studies that just sound a little fishy. And it was a study that I felt I could replicate quite easily. So for my test, I showed 29 participants the IBM logo and another 29 the Apple logo. I asked them to keep that brand logo in their mind as well. I showed them the logo for much longer than just a few milliseconds, too. I kept it on screen for a while, so you'd think it'd be even more effective at priming them. I even told them to keep it in their mind for as long as possible. After that, I asked him to come up with as many uses for a brick that you can think of. For example, a brick could be used to build a house. You've got 30 seconds. Sarah, 37, from Leicestershire was shown the IBM logo and said this.
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Various Participants
So a brick could be used to build a house. A brick could be used as a step for exercising up and down on a brick could be used as a weight for exercising. You can lift it up and down.
- [09:41]
Phil Agnew
Imogen, 23, from London was also shown the IBM logo and she said this.
- [09:45]
Various Participants
A brick could be used to, yeah, build a house. Build a building could help build a wall. It could help break other objects.
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Phil Agnew
And here's Nigel, 38, from Retford. You can obviously use bricks to create garden paths. You can use bricks to build a house. You can use bricks to create a wall. You can use bricks to create a fire pit. Sarah came up with 14 uses, Imogen with four and Nigel with nine. Now, here are some of the participants primed with the Apple logo.
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Various Participants
You could create a fire pit. You could use it to build a brick wall. You could use it to build A bird bath. You could use it to build a pathway.
- [10:29]
Phil Agnew
That's Danielle from Harrogate. She came up with 10 uses. You could build a shed, you could build a house, you could build a dog shelter or animal shelter. That's NAD38 from West Midlands. He came up with six uses. And here's Richard, 40 from Whitley. A brick. What a weird question. So, yeah, I'd use it for a house, I'd use it for brick walls, like a fire pit in the, in the garden. In total, Richard came up with 10 uses. Now, I won't make you listen to all 58 respondents. I will tally up the results for you. Those primed with the apple logo. Remember, that's the logo that the researchers said would make people more creative. They came up with 158 uses for a brick in total, averaging 5.45 uses per person. Those primed with the IBM logo, the apparently non creative logo, well, they actually came up with 229 uses for a brick in total. So they averaged 7.9 uses per participant. In my test, those primed with the IBM logo actually came up with 45% more uses than those primed with the apple logo. This result was statistically significant, but it was the exact opposite of the Fitzsimons 2008 paper. Does it mean that IBM actually makes people more creative? No, of course not. It just means that priming people with a logo is far too small of a factor to actually influence their creativity. Staring at a logo won't make you more or less creative. Just like saying one word like authentic won't change your perception. But I wasn't done. I wanted to test an even stranger priming study. This one was conducted by Goldsmith, Kim, Cho and Darr back in 2012. The study exposed participants to words relating to guilt. Words like guilt, guilty, remorse and sin. It found that those exposed to words about guilt were more likely to purchase candy due to a feeling of guilty pleasure. Again, I struggled to believe it. Surely just thinking about guilt can't make people binge on fast food. So I tested it. I asked half of my participants to recall a time in their life where they felt guilty and another half to recall a time in their life where they felt happy. I then asked both how likely they were to buy fast food today. This was a quantitative question. And the participants. Participants had to rank their likelihood of buying fast food on a five point scale. So either very unlikely, unlikely, neutral, likely, very likely. Would those primed with guilt desire fast food more? Well, yes. 66% of those who were told to think guilty thoughts said they were very likely or likely to buy fast food. Only 57% of those told to think about happy thoughts said they were very likely or likely to buy fast food. However, although the gilt primed group appears to be more likely to want fast food, 66% of them versus 57%, this difference is not statistically significant. The p value is 0.573 and that means the observed difference is probably just due to pure chance, not to priming. We can't confidently say that guilt increases fast food desire more than happiness based on this data. Maybe if I'd done it with a much bigger group we would have seen something statistically significant. But but this result is inconclusive and it's another example of me just not being able to replicate what these researchers in 2012 published. So far we've seen that guilt priming doesn't seem to make people desire fast food more, the Apple logo won't make people more creative, and the word authentic doesn't change participants perceptions. It's a fairly damning indictment of priming at the moment, but I had two more tests to run, one covering priming and anchoring, and the other covering perhaps the most controversial priming result of all time. All of that after this quick break. The Hustle Daily show is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily show is a fantastic show. I had the pleasure of watching the Hustle Daily show live at the last Inbound Conference in Boston and I loved it. The wonderful hosts share these really informative takes on business and tech news, but it's in a fairly laid back style. It's really easy to listen to. It's quite conversational. I think it's fantastic. They've recently done a fantastic episode on why tequila brands are failing and how you can turn greenhouse gases into butter. Both of those are excellent. I really recommend you go and give that show a listen. So go and listen to the Hustle Daily show wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back. You're listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Today I'm trying to debunk perhaps psychology's greatest mythology, priming. We've had three results so far, two of which proved the opposite of what the priming papers claimed, and one that wasn't statistically significant. But there's another aspect of priming I wanted to test. In 2011, the researcher Chevnev conducted a study that suggested priming can anchor a person's expectations in his study, participants were asked to imagine a delicious cheesecake and then estimate calories in an organic salad. Others were asked to imagine an organic salad and then estimate the calories in a delicious cheesecake. He found that those primed with the salad so who imagine the salad first they estimated lower calories for the cheesecake. So keeping in mind a healthy salad makes you think a cheesecake isn't as unhealthy. However, those primed with the cheesecake estimated higher calories for the salad. So keeping in mind a an unhealthy cheesecake makes you think the salad might be slightly more unhealthy. This is a combination of anchoring a relatively reliable nudge and priming, which I think is a much less reliable nudge. So I really wanted to test it this time. I got 152 British participants and I split them into two groups. Both were asked to estimate the calories in an organic salad and a delicious cheesecake. However, half were asked to first estimate the cheesecake's calories, while the other half were asked to first estimate the salad's calories. Would thinking about the salad first make the cheesecake seem healthier like the study suggested? Well, no. In my study, those who gave the salad estimate first actually predicted that the cheesecake would have 60 more calories than those in the non primed group. Again, priming didn't work. I wasn't able to replicate this finding. But what about the other group? Would those primed to think about a delicious cheesecake assume that a salad has more calories? Well, no. Again, in fact, those primed with the cheesecake thought the salad had 21 fewer calories. Priming it just doesn't seem to work for me. In test after test. I can't replicate any of these findings. I know my studies aren't perfect. I know my conditions aren't identical to the researchers. But I'm not finding any of the effects that they shared in these famous studies. But there is still one final test I wanted to run. It is one of the first priming examples that Kahneman shares in his book, and it's called the Florida Effect. Here's what Kahneman says about the effect in his in an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators asked students at New York University, most aged between 18 and 22, to assemble four word sentences from a set of five words. For example, find he it yellow instantly. For one group of students, half of the scrambled sentences contained words associated with the elderly, such as Florida, forgetful, bold, gray, or wrinkle. When they completed that task, the young participants were sent to do another experiment in the office down the hall. That short walk. The walk from the first experiment to the office down the hall. That short walk was what the experiment was about. The researchers unobtrusively measured the time it took for people to get from one end of the corridor to the other. As Barg had predicted, the young people who had fashioned a sentence from words with an end elderly theme walked down the hallway significantly slower than the others. It sounds incredible, right? Just show people the words grey, forgetful, bold, or wrinkle and they'll walk slowly. What a fantastic finding. If you run a retail store, just write wrinkle in big letters over the racks of products and people will peruse your store a little slower. Or will they? To test it, I asked 64 Brits to read out loud a set of words I asked half the Brits to read out words associated with aging and decay.
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Various Participants
Forgetful, bald, bright, stooped, faded, slouched, shaky, slow, brittle, quiet.
- [19:24]
Phil Agnew
And I asked a totally separate group to read out words relating to youth and energy.
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Various Participants
Playful, loud, bright, tangled, swift, vivid, daring, clever, brave, upright.
- [19:38]
Phil Agnew
The aging words were forgetful, bold, grey, wrinkled, stooped, faded, brittle, quiet, slouched, pale, shaky, frail, slow, weathered, hollow, old. That is 16 words with 26 syllables. The energetic, youthful words were playful, loud, bright, tangled, swift, vivid, daring, clever, upright, bold, steady, brave, sharp, glowing, mellow, new. That list also had 16 words with 26 syllables. Both of the lists should take one roughly the same amount of time to read out loud, give or take a few seconds. They both have the same amount of words and the same amount of syllables. But I wanted to see if reading those aging, frail words would make participants read significantly slower. Surely, if it's proven to make people actually walk slower, then it should also slow their reading speed. So would those saying this forgetful, gree, bald, stooped, wrinkled, faded, quiet take any longer than those saying this?
- [20:45]
Various Participants
Steady, brave, glowing, mellow, sharp, swift.
- [20:50]
Phil Agnew
Well, yes, those who read the words about age and decay, they did take 2/3 of a second longer. The age and decay group took 17.73 seconds on average, while the youthful and energetic group took 17.10 seconds on average. But this isn't a win for priming. That difference is far too small to be statistically significant. It's less than a second. It's clear that this method of priming doesn't work. Or at least it doesn't work to the extent at which the researchers in that original study claimed. They claimed that Just thinking about old words would make people walk significantly slower, whereas I got people to actually read those words and it didn't change their reading speed to any significant degree. And I'll be honest, this shouldn't have surprised me because in January 2012 a study called Behavioural Priming it's all in the mind, but whose mind was also debunked this effect. They replicated the original Florida effect study using a much larger sample size and failed to show any of the same results. Being primed did not make people walk slower. I replicated five priming experiments with over 100 different British people. None of the experiments replicated the priming results. Priming people with a word like authentic wasn't able to change their perception. Showing an apple logo didn't make Brits more creative, Feelings of guilt didn't make participants more likely to buy fast food, thoughts about salad didn't make a cheesecake seem healthier, and reading words about old age didn't slow down the readers. But my informal experiments shouldn't be what convinces you. Hundreds of professional researchers have also failed to replicate these priming studies, and it appears that priming is one of the least reliable principles in behavioral science. And I'm not surprised. These tiny, subtle subliminal messages will rarely change behavior on a noticeable scale. The world's most successful companies aren't just using tiny primes to persuade you because they know they don't work en masse. Instead they use reliable behavioural science stuff like loss aversion, anchoring, scarcity, the IKEA effect. These principles have been proven to work not in a one off study, but time and time again while priming hasn't. My tests were informal, they weren't foolproof, and I'm sure many of you listening will pick holes in them. But they did satisfy my curiosity. For years I've read that a tiny prime could shift behaviour. I've read books like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and genuinely believed that a green website might make Americans spend more. Apparently because green is the colour of money. All of that is bogus and none of it should be used. If you want to influence and persuade, use reliable behavioral science principles and avoid anyone who tells you that they can manipulate others with just priming. That is all for today folks. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. I've been pretty desperate to test out some of these priming studies on real people, so I'm glad I've finally been able to scratch that itch. As you can imagine, creating an episode like this takes an awful lot of time. I actually first came up with a concept for this episode back in March 2024. It has taken a long time for me to get it done. So if you enjoy today's show and you'd like more just like this, please do share this episode, post it on social media, email it to a friend, or just talk about it at your next meeting. Sharing it however you like really does help the show grow and it will help me create more episodes just like this. Big thank you to voxpopme for running those video surveys for me. With voxpop Me, you can quickly run qualitative and quantitative research using video surveys and live interview solutions. You can invite participants from their enormous panel for the video surveys and you'll see results within just a few hours. It's a fantastic tool, not just because it's really fast to get the actual research, but they've also got amazing AI analysis tools that were very, very useful for me when I was analyzing all those verbatim results. If you want to try voxpop Me, just go and click on the link in the show notes. And if you want more from Nudge, please do go check out nudge on YouTube. There's much more content on there. Just search for nudge podcast on YouTube and I'll pop up. And if you haven't already, please do subscribe to the Nudge Newsletter. Every week I spend around 18 hours researching behavioral science. A lot of that is spent reading and then the rest of it is spent actually translating what I've read, what I found into the newsletter that I publish every Friday. In that newsletter, you get the best tip that I found that week. To subscribe, go to nudgepodcast.com and click Newsletter in the menu. It is free to subscribe and you can unsubscribe at any time. All of the results from today's experiments that I ran are in the show notes. If you want to dig into the data, you can find it there. That is all for today. I've been your host, Villagnew, and I'll be back next week for another episode of Nudge. Cheers.