Primed by Expectations: Discover Magazine
It's a fascinating result, but one that isn't a deathblow for priming as a method. Note that Doyen isn't suggesting that Bargh's team were simply making up their results to fit what they expected. Rather, their expectations affected their behaviour, which then affected the volunteers' behaviour. The volunteers were still being primed, albeit by the experimenters rather than the word tasks. "Either possibility is a confirmation for the power of priming," says Tom Stafford from the University of Sheffield....
"Our results don't completely rule out the possibility of unconscious priming," says Doyen, "but they point to the fact that the (generally weak) effects may also be influenced by many other factors that are almost never controlled in such studies."
The study also serves as a good reminder about how important it is for scientists to try and repeat each others' results.
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