That experiment has changed Latham’s opinion of priming and has him wondering now about the applications for unconscious primes in our daily lives.
He seems to have skipped right over the part where he wonders why he and Bargh see one thing and other people see something different. Do people update far more strongly on evidence if it comes from their own lab?
Also, yay priming! (I don’t want this comment to sound negative about priming as such)
Do people update far more strongly on evidence if it comes from their own lab?
This isn’t a completely unreasonable thing to do. For one thing, you have much more knowledge about the methodology of experiments conducted in your lab.
You know that you, personally, are not being deliberately, knowingly fraudulent. That says nothing about your assistants, nor the possibility of subconscious biases (“I really want this to be true” and “I KNOW this is true, I just have to prove it to those fools at the academy!” and “Who has the last laugh NOW Mr. Bond?!”)
He seems to have skipped right over the part where he wonders why he and Bargh see one thing and other people see something different. Do people update far more strongly on evidence if it comes from their own lab?
Also, yay priming! (I don’t want this comment to sound negative about priming as such)
This isn’t a completely unreasonable thing to do. For one thing, you have much more knowledge about the methodology of experiments conducted in your lab.
You also know your own results aren’t fraudulent.
You know that you, personally, are not being deliberately, knowingly fraudulent. That says nothing about your assistants, nor the possibility of subconscious biases (“I really want this to be true” and “I KNOW this is true, I just have to prove it to those fools at the academy!” and “Who has the last laugh NOW Mr. Bond?!”)
This strikes me as a special case of the principal that people update more strongly on evidence they directly observe.