Multiple Mechanisms of Prime-to-Behavior Effects

Recent research has explored how the activation of social constructs via priming can affect behavior. Multiple mechanisms have received support, including direct activation of behavioral representations, goal activation, biases in person perception, biases in situation perception, and biases in self-perception. We review the evolving complexity of proposed prime-to-behavior mechanisms, discuss the predictions of each mechanism, and suggest some integrative principles that influence how and when primed constructs affect behavior. Environmental stimuli can subtly activate mental constructs that direct behavior even when people are unaware of the source of activation. For example, casting one’s vote in a school (vs. another polling location) can increase the likelihood of one supporting a sales tax increase to fund education, even though people are unlikely to identify polling location as an input into their decision making (Berger, Meredith, & Wheeler, 2008). An extraordinarily wide range of behaviors can be affected by subtle environmental stimuli, such as walking speed (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996), speech volume (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003), academic performance (Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998), economic decisions (Smeesters, Warlop, Van Avermaet, Corneille, & Yzerbyt, 2003), helping (Macrae & Johnston, 1998), and cleaning (Holland, Hendricks, & Aarts, 2005), just to name a few. Although these effects are robust and widespread, their underlying basis is still debated. Explanations for these effects all center on processes involving construct accessibility. Specifically, features of the environment make some constructs more accessible in memory, and this accessibility somehow translates into behavior. For example, exposure to pictures of libraries increases the accessibility of silence (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003) and the presence of business-related objects in a room increases the accessibility of competitiveness (Kay, Wheeler, Bargh, & Ross, 2004). There are many ways these accessible constructs can influence behavior, and each mechanism suggests the possibility of different moderating and mediating variables. In this paper,