In allergy we have the two stimulus phenomenon! The first exposure may not produce that much of a reaction but the second one would! The first one was just the initial stimulus while the second is the actual reaction! You can very well say that the first stimulus is the Primer!
When this happens in human behaviour it is called Priming!
Priming in psychology is a phenomenon where exposure to one stimulus influences how you react to a subsequent stimulus, usually without your conscious awareness!
One is classically a Semantic or word Priming!
The set up here is that you read or hear the word “yellow”! And then the test is that you are are asked to quickly identify a new word flashed on a screen!
The result of Priming is that you recognize the word “banana” much faster than you would recognize an unrelated word like “television”!
This apparently happens because the word or thought or action activates related concepts in your memory network, making the second related concept easier to process!
One more example is that if you see or hear the word “doctor,” you are much faster at filling in the blanks to complete a partial word puzzle like D _ C T _ R!
Daniel Kahneman popularized priming in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow as a prime example of System 1 thinking—the brain’s fast, automatic, and emotional operating system.
Kahneman described the influence of an idea on an action as the ideomotor effect (e.g., words related to old age subtly causing people to walk more slowly down a hallway)!
Your associative network connects related ideas automatically. A cue like money can subconsciously trigger independent or selfish behavior patterns!
Then again these are only subltle changes and indications! It has been shown that in larger studies or in more common and consistent situations, priming plays only a small role!
When it is time for an important decision, your whole BRAIN takes part in the process! Then again it does make sense to PRIME yourself before any major decision!
Like how the Indian board made Mohinder Amarnath Bhardwaj the vice captain in the pivotal 1983 cup!
Now your body is naturally primed to sleep in the night! Let’s not disturb that!
Shub ratri!
