Executive Summary:
Procedural priming refers to how the frequent or recent use of certain cognitive procedures on one task can lead to a greater propensity to use the same procedures on a subsequent task. In this paper, we demonstrate how procedural priming may be used to assess spontaneous inference formation in situations where the inference involves a relationship or rule. We do so in the context of the advertising cost-product quality rule, i.e., that “higher advertising expense implies higher product quality.” Prior research suggests that underlying the advertising cost-quality rule is a basic human attribution (the effort investment rule) that someone is investing a lot of effort in a cause, which implies a true belief in that cause. We prime the effort investment rule in an interpersonal context and show that this affects spontaneous generation of the advertising cost-quality rule in an advertising context.
Citation: Kirmani, Amna, Michelle Lee and Carolyn Yoon (2004), Procedural Priming Effects on Spontaneous Inference Formation, Journal of Economic Psychology, 25 (6), 859-875. |
