Experiments on Subconscious Influence
There have been many experiments done to test the subconscious
influence of words on people. I have even reported on some (on
another website) which deal with "priming." In one
experiment, for example, volunteers chose a word from a list,
and when the word they chose was related to old age, they walked
more slowly upon leaving the laboratory. There was no conscious
recognition of this effect on their part. In some experiments
the old-age words were introduced in other ways, with the same
general effect.
Now we find that studies of this type may have a flaw. At
least there is a flaw in the assumption that it was the words
which caused the slower movements. Stephane Doyen from the Université
Libre de Bruxelles replicated one of the more famous of these
experiments, but with one some minor changes, and found no effect
from the words. According to an article in Discover Magazine;
Two other groups have since replicated
the effect, but neither stuck to the original set-up. That’s
what Doyen wanted to do, but with three important tweaks. First,
in Bargh’s study, a researcher timed the volunteers with
a stopwatch. This time, Doyen would use infrared sensors for
more accurate readings. Second, Bargh recruited 60 volunteers,
but Doyen recruited twice as many. Third, Doyen also recruited
four experimenters who carried out the study, but didn’t
know what the point of it was.
This time, the priming words had
no impact on the volunteers’ walking speed. They left the
test room neither more slowly nor more quickly than when they
arrived. The famous result hadn’t replicated. Why?
Doyen suspected that Bargh’s
research team could have unwittingly told their volunteers how
they were meant to behave... Perhaps they themselves moved more
slowly if they expected the volunteer to do so. Maybe they spoke
more languidly, or shook hands more leisurely.
So it may not be the words, but this is still a fascinating
example of subconscious influence of behavior. The subjects in
the original experiments did slow down, and were not aware that
they were doing so. If nothing else, this suggests we can influence
people quite a bit without their awareness of what we are doing.
Doyen repeated the experiments in a few different ways, and
(again from the Discover Magazine article);
When Doyen looked at the data from
the infrared sensors, he found that the volunteers moved more
slowly only when they were tested by experimenters who expected
them to move slowly.
So we see the effect of a less-than-conscious influence here,
but we also see the need to replicate experiments while controlling
for many possible factors. In general it is another lesson in
the necessity to challenge assumptions (in this case the assumption
that it was the words which had the effect), something I always
recommend for deeper thinking.
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