Start-up effect: a pencil that makes people smile unconsciously

Breakthrough is the focus of scientific research, and our understanding of the first major breakthrough in the Lenovo mechanism is the improvement of measurement methods. A few decades ago, the only way to study associations was to ask people questions, such as "when you heard the word 'day', what was the first word in your mind," the researchers recorded the frequency of different responses, such as "night." ", "Sunny", or "day long" and so on. In the 1980s, psychologists discovered that when a word is seen, human thinking changes immediately, and the change is measurable. At the same time, many related vocabulary are provoked. If you have recently seen or heard the word "drink__", you may fill in the word "soup" with a "氵" instead of "field." Of course, if you just saw the word "sports__", you might fill in the word "field". We call this phenomenon a priming effect, which means that the concept of “drinking” appears before “soup” and “sports” precedes “field”.

There are many manifestations of the priming effect. If you have the concept of "drinking" in your mind at this time, just when someone whispers to you with the word "soup" or put a bowl of soup in front of you, you will definitely be faster than usual. Realize the word "soup". Of course, the first thing that comes to mind in your mind is not only the concept of soup, but also many concepts related to food, including pork, hungry, fat, diet and biscuits. If you are almost always sitting at a shaking table in your recent meal, you will first see the concept of shaking in your mind. In addition, the concept of starting Lenovo can also lead to other concepts, although this ability is not strong. Like the ripples in the pond, the activation of the concept is gradually extended from a small part of the online concept of Lenovo. This ripple effect is now one of the most exciting explorations in psychology research.

Another major breakthrough in memory understanding is that researchers have found that priming effects are not limited to concepts and vocabulary. Of course, you can't understand this simply through conscious experience, but you must accept this alternative idea that your actions and feelings are sometimes subject to events that you don't even realize. In one experiment, psychologist John Bach and his colleagues asked several students at New York University to pick up four words from a five-word phrase to reorganize the sentence. Half of the reorganized sentences in one of the group's students contain vocabulary related to the elderly, such as Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, or wrinkled. When they completed the task, they were called to the other office in the hall to take another experiment. Walking from one end of the hall to the other is the key to this experiment. Researchers quietly measured the time they spent. As Bach expected, young people who made sentences on the subject of old age went much slower than others. This experiment later became a classic case.

This "Florida effect" includes two phases of information initiation. First, although no one has mentioned the word "old age", the above-mentioned group of words is reminiscent of age; second, these ideas have spawned an act of slow walking, which is related to the elderly. All of this happens unconsciously. When these students answered the questions, no one mentioned that they noticed that the words had something in common, and they insisted that the words they saw in the first experiment did not affect the behavior after the experiment. The concept of “old age” is not their self-consciousness, but their behavior has changed. The priming effect of this concept-affected behavior is called the conceptual motion effect and deserves our attention. Although you are certainly not aware of this effect, after reading the above text, the concept of "old age" must have had a certain impact on you. Suppose you need to stand up and take a cup of water to drink, and you will get up a little slower than usual, unless you happen to dislike the concept of "old age." Some research cases show that if you are disgusted with this concept, people's actions will be slightly faster than usual.

In the opposite case, the conceptual motion effect is equally applicable, as evidenced by an experiment done at a German university. This experiment is a replica of the early experiment that Bach and his colleagues did in New York. In the experiment, the researchers asked the students who participated in the experiment to walk around the room for 5 minutes at a speed of 30 steps per minute, which is one-third of their normal walking speed. After this simple experiment, students can more quickly identify vocabulary related to “old age”, such as “forgetfulness”, “old age” and “loneness”. The priming effect often produces a coherent response: if you first think of old age, you will behave like you are old, and this ageing performance will reinforce your view of "old age."

Interlinking is very common in Lenovo networks. For example, when you feel happy, you will smile, and a smile will make you happy. Hold the pencil between the teeth for a few seconds, with one end of the eraser pointing to the right and the tip of the pen pointing to the left. Then pick up the pen and bite the end with the eraser, the tip of the pen pointing directly in front of you. Maybe you didn't realize that there was an action in the above activity that wrinkled your eyebrows, and another action made your face smile. Someone once asked some college students to rate the humor level of Gary Larsson's comic "Back of the Moon" and asked them to bite a pen while rating. Those "smiling" students rated the humor of this comic book much higher than those who were "frowning". In another experiment, those frowning people often showed a stronger emotional response when they saw hungry children, arguing people, and uncomfortable pictures such as accident scenes.

Simply put, common actions can unwittingly affect our thoughts and feelings. In one experiment, subjects listened to some information with new headphones as required. They were told that the purpose of the experiment was to test the quality of the audio equipment. The researchers told them to constantly shake their heads to check if the device had a problem with sound distortion. Half of the subjects had to nod and nod, while the other half had to Shake his head. What they heard was an editorial of the radio. Those who nod are often receptive to the information they hear, and those who shake their heads tend to deny that information. It is important to emphasize that the subjects are not aware of the above problems, they just habitually associate negative or accepted attitudes with their usual body language. From this we can see that the old saying goes, "No matter what you think, you have to be calm." This is a very good suggestion. Only if you are truly calm, you may have a return.

How much will you voluntarily invest in the box?

We thought that the judgments and choices we made were conscious and autonomous, but the findings of the research on the priming effect subverted our previous understanding. For example, most of us believe that voting is a well-thought-out behavior that reflects our acceptance and evaluation of policies and is not affected by irrelevant things. For example, our vote should not be affected by the location of the vote, but in fact this factor actually affects the voting results. A study of the 2000 Arizona constituency voting model showed that when a polling station is located in a school, the approval rate for the proposal to increase investment in education will be higher than that of the polling station located elsewhere. Another experiment shows that when people see photos of classrooms and school lockers, they tend to support proposals for education. The impact of these images on these subjects is greater than the impact of their parents or other voters and their differences! The study of the priming effect begins with the initial empirical study—people think that “aging” will slow down—and has achieved some development to this day, and we now know that the priming effect affects every aspect of our lives.

Things that are reminiscent of money are often disturbing. In one experiment, the subject saw a list of five words, and as required, they had to choose four of the five words that make up the money-themed phrase. Other experiments that start imagining are more challenging to perceive people, including something that has nothing to do with money in the background, such as a pile of imitation coins on a table, or a computer screensaver floating in the water. Some of the dollar bills, etc.

People who had the concept of having money in their minds were more independent than they were when they didn't have this association. They will consistently solve a very difficult problem, and they will not hesitate to pay double effort. It is really necessary to ask the researchers for help. This approach clearly demonstrates the improvement of its self-reliance ability. People who have a rich concept in their minds are more selfish: they are even less willing to take the time to help another student who pretends to be less clear about the experimental task. When a researcher accidentally dropped a bundle of pencils onto the floor, the subjects in their minds who thought about the money picked up relatively few pens. In another series of experiments, the subjects learned that they would have a brief conversation with another person later, familiar with each other, they were responsible for two chairs, and the researchers left to find the person. Subjects with the concept of money in the subconscious are placed farther away from the chair than those without the concept. Those who are full of money show a stronger willingness to be alone.

All of the above findings have a common theme, that is, the concept of money breeds individualism: not willing to be with others, not relying on others, and not accepting requests from others. Psychologist Catherine Voss completed this significant study. It is commendable that she did not bring her many discoveries to the public, but left more room for readers to think. Catherine's research is far-reaching, and her findings suggest that there are many things in our cultural environment that are reminiscent of money that affect our behaviors and attitudes in ways we don't realize. Not so glorious. Some cultures often remind people to respect others, others often remind people of God, and people from some countries pay homage to the photos of great leaders. In an authoritarian state, the portrait of a leader everywhere can not only convey to you the feeling that "big brother is watching you", but also gradually lose your independent thinking and independent behavior.

The research evidence of the priming effect shows that the assertion that "people will die" can make the idea of ​​dictatorship more popular, because in the case of people fearing death, the idea of ​​dictatorship will make people feel peace of mind. Other experiments confirm Freud's insights into the role of symbols and metaphors in unconscious associations. Let's say you can look at the two incomplete words W__H and S__P below. If someone thinks of something unspeakable in recent days, these people often fill these two incomplete words into WASH and SOAP, and rarely fill in WISH and SOUP. In addition, just thinking about hurting a colleague behind it would make people want to buy soap, disinfectant or detergent instead of buying batteries, juice or candy. When people feel that their minds have been tarnished, they often trigger their thoughts of cleaning their bodies. This impulse is called the Macbeth effect.

The parts of the body that people clean are often the parts that make them feel sinful. One experiment required subjects to "lie" to an imaginary person by phone or email. In the subsequent test of the demand for different products, those who lie by phone prefer mouthwash instead of soap; those who lie by email are more than soap, not mouthwash.

When I explain to the audience the various studies on priming effects, their response is usually to be suspicious. This is not surprising, because System 2 believes that it controls everything and believes that it knows why it should make one or the other. There may also be some sudden problems in your mind: How can fine-tuning the situation have such a big impact? Do these experiments show that we are completely at the mercy of the situation, always obeying its instructions? of course not. The influence of starting thinking is strong, but it is not very big. Of the 100 voters, only a few of them initially decided who to choose. If the voting points are located in the school rather than in the church, they will make different choices about school-related issues, but they will not Excluding a few people will make the opposite choice.

However, the key to the problem is to accept the results of the relevant research, rather than doubt it. These results are not fabricated, nor are they statistically accidental. You have no choice but to accept the fact that the main conclusions of these studies are correct. More importantly, you must admit that these conclusions are correct for you. If you see floating dollar bills on your computer screensaver, the number of pencils you can pick up for that clumsy stranger may be less than when you don't see the money. You don't believe that these conclusions apply to you, because these conclusions don't match your subjective experience, and your subjective experience is primarily determined by System 2. The priming effect comes from system 1, and when this effect occurs, you are not aware of it at all.

I ended the above explanation with a perfect presentation of the priming effect, which was carried out in a tea room in an office of a university in the UK. For many years, the staff of this office have been buying tea or coffee from their own pockets. They wrote down the recommended price of each cup of tea and coffee and put it on the wall. Every time they go to work, they will charge the tea or coffee. Vote for an "honest box." One day, someone posted a horizontal bar on top of the price list. There was neither warning nor explanation. In the next 10 weeks, the weekly bar is labeled with a new picture, either a flower or a pair of eyes, like a person staring at the picture. No one has commented on these new decorations, but the money in the "honest box" has changed significantly, as shown in Figure 4, which deserves a careful study.

In the first week of the experiment, there were people with big eyes staring at tea or coffee, and the average amount of money they invested in the "honest box" was 70 pence. In the second week, the picture was a flower, and the average amount of money in the box was 15 pence less. This trend continues, and the number of money in the box will decrease in the week of encountering a picture of flowers. On average, the money in the box at the "eye week" is three times that of the "flower week." Obviously, just a symbolic surveillance symbol can motivate people to improve their behavior. As we expected, there was no conscious involvement in the process of producing this impact. Now you believe that you can't escape the same model?

A few years ago, psychologist Timothy Wilson wrote "We Are Our Strangers". Now that you know the stranger in your body, it may be the master of you in many things, even though you almost never realize it. The various impressions that System 1 brings to you often become your beliefs and are the source of motivation for your choices and actions. It can connect the current situation with what is happening recently, and combine with recent expectations to make a tacit explanation of what happened to you or your side. System 1 contains a cognitive model of the world, which can immediately estimate which things are normal and which are unexpected. It is the basis for your quick and intuitive judgment, and this judgment is accurate in all likelihood. Almost all of your judgment activities are unconsciously completed under the guidance of this system. However, System 1 is also the source of many systemic errors in your intuition, as evidenced in later chapters.

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