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Abstract
This research examines the temporal range of subliminal priming effects on complex behavior. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were subliminally primed with words either related or unrelated to intelligence before completing a practice exam, administered 1 to 4 days before an actual course midterm. Results revealed that the intelligence primes increased performance on the midterm compared to neutral primes. Experiment 1 demonstrated that being told that the priming task was designed to help exam performance moderated the effect of the intelligence primes. In Experiment 2, practice test performance mediated the effect of the primes on midterm performance. These experiments demonstrated that subliminal priming may have long-term effects on real-world behavior, and demonstrates one means by which long-term priming effects may occur.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was facilitated by a National Science Foundation fellowship awarded to Brian S. Lowery. For serving as experimenters, we are grateful to Kate Chan, Evangeline Lawson, and Nina Kim. For helpful comments on previous drafts we thank Karen Cheng, Adam Fingerhut, Elisheva Gross, Emily Impett, Matthew Lieberman, M. Park, Pamela Riley, Julie Smurda, and Christian Wheeler.
Notes
1There was no effect of the two priming blocks.
2Performance on the practice exam was higher for women (M = 82.31, SD = 10.48) than men (M = 73.81, SD = 13.77), F(1, 75) = 8.41, p < .01, η2 = .101. Similarly, performance on the midterm was higher for women (M = 84.69, SD = 8.60) than men (M = 79.63, SD = 8.46), F(1, 75) = 4.42, p < .05, η2 = .056.
