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How Subconscious Priming Influences Our Actions

CSEF · 2026 Cognitive Science (Junior Division)

Menahem Nassi

Overview

Priming is a psychological phenomenon that has a large impact on many aspects of society, including our day-to-day decisions. A particular form of priming, masked priming, can bias people's choices without their awareness. The full effects of masked priming are still unclear and studying these effects could help scientists gain a better understanding of biases and brain function. This study investigated the influence of semantic, phonetic, and identical priming techniques on choice behavior. Subjects were presented with a multiple choice test with 30 questions total, 15 of which included an answer choice that had been primed using one of the three techniques on a previously presented story. For each subject, the proportion of questions for which the primed choice was chosen was calculated. The results indicated that priming had a significant effect on subject choices on the test, with the average primed choice proportion of 0.46 significantly higher than the chance proportion level of 0.33 (one-sample, one-sided t-test, p<0.001). Furthermore, each specific priming technique when considered separately had a significant effect on subject's choices (semantic = 0.42, p<0.001; identical = 0.52, p<0.001; phonetic = 0.42, p=0.004), with identical priming having a significantly stronger effect than phonetic priming (paired two-sided t-test, p = 0.048). These results confirmed that masked priming, particularly the identical priming technique, strongly influences choice behavior. This study advances our understanding of how priming can lead to biases and could inform efforts to avoid such biases altogether.​

Competition history

  • CSEF 2026 Cognitive Science (Junior Division) · Entry J-06-05

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