I need your help. Pick a letter: A or K?

K

K

Interesting little phenomenon I should point out here: K is chosen completely dominatively over A. Other sources have shown this to be true. Why is it, do you think, people choose K over A?

Priming.

Most people who will agree to answer the questions have been "primed" as they say in research. The most recent thought or experience influences out response.

When you say Pick a letter A or K the first thinking process a person will do is decide if or not they will play along. When they decide to play along most people will say Okay. Which in fact is O.K.

So when they pick the most recent letter they just primed themselves with is K.

Not every one uses O.K. some do say alright so they are more likely to pick A

You'll probably find that if you asked Pick a letter A or B Students will prefer A whereas older generation will prefer B since A has been primed to be a good grade for students. and A is significance of merely one.

If you really wanted people to intuit which would be better for you would need to take two images and asked them which one they feel is more positive. They have to think longer and are less likely to be primed.

There has been been research into the effects of priming. Bargh, Chen, & Burrows 1996, Bargh and Chen 1997. In essence what they found is that what we most recently experienced at a non-conscious level determines our behaviour responses and actions.

In one of their experiments they primed the participants with scrambled words by exposing them to words which were associated with old age. They observed afterwards that the subjects were walking slower like they aged.

So consider your subjects primed.

Pick a Letter A or K .... O. K... which letter...K

Pre-conscious processing.

Alex

quote:

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Originally posted by youngprer:
I need your help. Pick a letter: A or K?

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Guess I have been primed but I was going to say K as well but I felt it was because it was a more "mysterious" letter and that A was just plain boring.

Stevie