1 Individual Susceptibility to Priming Effects STACY WOOD* University of South Carolina CAIT POYNOR University of Pittsburgh TANYA L. CHARTRAND Duke University *Stacy Wood is Moore Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Marketing at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, [email protected]. Cait Poynor is an assistant professor of marketing at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, [email protected]. Tanya L. Chartrand is professor of marketing and psychology at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, [email protected]. 2 Do individuals differ in their susceptibility to priming effects? If so, who is most vulnerable to priming influences? Conventional wisdom suggests that priming influences (especially those embedded in persuasive messages or advertisements) are most likely to exploit vulnerable individuals, such as those with low literacy levels or cognitive ability. However, an examination of the theoretical basis for priming suggests the opposite: individuals with high cognitive capacities in attention and associative thinking may be more strongly influenced by primes. Here, we propose a simple 6-item Susceptibility to Priming (STP) index. We demonstrate the efficacy of this index in explaining magnitude of priming effects in three experimental studies. By identifying a generalized individual difference in STP, this research contributes theoretical insight into the priming mechanism, policy-relevant insight regarding the use of priming stimuli in marketing messages, and an empirical tool for identifying stronger effect sizes in priming research. 3 “However, the very ubiquity, and relative ease of obtaining these [priming] effects, as well as the rather surprising and dramatic effects that ‘mere’ priming can have raises many important ‘second-generation’ questions, for instance:…Are there individual differences in priming effectiveness...” John Bargh, 2006 Priming research demonstrates the widespread ability of incidental exposure to stimuli to influence how individuals set goals, evaluate objects, report attitudes, and engage in behavioral responses (for reviews, see Dijksterhuis, Chartrand and Aarts 2006; Bargh and Chartrand 1999). It is not surprising that priming has been widely investigated as a form of influence in marketplace persuasion, especially in advertisements (e.g., Forehand and Deshpande 2001; Mandel 2003; Pechmann and Knight 2002). The consumer behavior literature has traditionally supported the belief that “subliminal advertising” does not work, but this belief has been brought into question by recent and robust demonstrations of nonconscious priming effects (Bargh 2002). If priming effects may indeed be effectively employed in persuasive media, then are some individuals more impacted by that imperceptible influence? We seek to answer this question by systematically exploring a broad array of individual difference factors to determine what may lead some individuals to exhibit an increased susceptibility to priming (STP). Variance in prime efficacy has often been reported both across studies and within studies, leading researchers to wonder if priming efficacy depends, in part, on specific characteristics of the individual (e.g., Ansorge 2004; Cheng and Chartrand 2000; van Baaren et al. 2003). This question becomes increasingly interesting in light of potential applications of priming within persuasive messages. Consumer behavior research has often identified consumers who are vulnerable to persuasive influence— especially unethical or “under the radar” persuasion tactics—to be those who are at risk 4 because of deficits in age, experience, or cognitive ability (e.g., Morgan, Schuler, and Stoltman 1995). This is congruent with a long-standing societal perception of the vulnerable—those who need external protection and support—as weak, infirm, or unintelligent (Bremner 1994). We propose that the mechanism by which semantic primes operate creates a unique situation where those most susceptible to priming effects are those we would consider most invulnerable according to conventional marketplace wisdom—decision-makers who are, broadly speaking, engaged and highly associative. We posit, first, that some individuals are more engaged with their surroundings, paying greater levels of attention to environmental cues which would enhance the likelihood or quality of their exposure to primes. Second, we argue that individuals may differ in their cognitive abilities— specifically, their innate tendency to engage in associative cognitive processing, thus impacting the magnitude a given prime may exert via spreading activation. Based on supporting evidence within the extant priming literature, we develop a simple index measure of STP that is based on an individual’s combined attentional and associational cognitive tendencies. We then test the STP index in three studies to assess whether it reliably explains differential priming magnitude across individuals. These findings offer important insights to both theory and practice. For theory, the identification of individuals with increased susceptibility to primes provides further evidence of the cognitive processes and necessary individual factors that underlie priming effects. The STP index also provides a practical tool for future priming research as its use as a covariate can help uncover priming effects that may otherwise be obscured by individual differences in the research population. This is increasingly important as the 5 “next generation” of priming research will look outside the lab in investigations of real world marketplace influence where individual variance is most likely to exist (Bargh 2006). For practice, these findings have important consequences for marketers and public policy makers who wish to identify those consumers most likely to be influenced by subtle cues in decision environments. For example, imagine the use of visual cues in a high school cafeteria that are designed to prompt students to make healthy lunch choices; our findings suggest that such cues might be least effective for “at risk” students. Conversely, firms that target products to highly educated and involved consumers (e.g., Apple, Volvo) may be most encouraged to use primes as cues within marketing messages because of the cue’s efficacy in this population. In order to explore this issue, we first turn to a discussion of individual factors that may contribute to priming susceptibility. PRIMING AND INDIVIDUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY In one of the first notable demonstrations of priming, Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977) found that participants exposed to personality concepts in an earlier task, later interpreted the ambiguous actions of an unknown individual (Donald) in line with the primed trait. Not long after, Herr (1989) used the priming paradigm to investigate pricing and product judgments. Since then, much work has investigated priming influence within persuasive domains. The great interest in priming research within consumer behavior has been driven by the broad range of responses that primes may influence. A prime may make particular elements of the environment more salient and thus more influential in later evaluations or may activate goal-states that are subsequently pursued until 6 completion (Bargh et al. 2001; Chartrand and Bargh 1996), may activate semantic schemas (e.g., Aarts and Dijksterhuis 2000; Bargh, Chen and Burrows 1996; Macrae and Johnston 1998), or may encourage behaviors, evaluations, emotions and even processing styles which are consistent with a given prime (e.g., Meyers-Levy 1989; Winkielman, Berridge and Wilbarger 2005). In his agenda for future priming research and theory building, Bargh (2006) explicitly ponders the potential for individual differences in priming effectiveness. Extant priming research illustrates that the efficacy of a given prime relies on two basic requirements—first, that physical (perceptual) exposure to the prime occurs and, second, that this leads to a spreading activation of associated concepts. This conceptualization guides our index generation process in that it suggests that individual differences in attention to the environment may impact the former requirement and differences in associative thinking may impact the latter. Thus, we begin with the idea that individual susceptibility to priming may be viewed as an aggregation of both attentional and associational differences. Individual Tendencies to Attention Priming most obviously requires that a cue be perceived by the primed individual. Conscious awareness of perception is not necessary; in fact, some evidence suggests that increasing consciousness of exposure can reduce priming efficacy (Bornstein and D’Agostino 1992). Yet, weak or non-existent priming effects can be due to a failure of 7 sufficient physical exposure. Ansorge (2004) has demonstrated this “collicular contribution” to priming by showing that primes presented in weak visual fields have less impact than those presented in strong visual fields. Similarly, increasing prime strength, which may increase physical exposure, can lead to stronger priming effects (Srull and Wyer 1979). We posit that individuals who more closely attend to their environments will demonstrate stronger priming effects. In examining priming efficacy variance within the literature, there are some examples where one may infer that differing efficacy is influenced by a broader attentional proclivity (i.e., the extent to which