PSYC 215 Chapter 3: Chapter 3

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: John Lydon

Document Summary

We respond not to reality as it is, but to reality as we construe it. Even before we attend to the world around us, unattended stimuli can subtly predispose how we will interpret and recall events (this is most often done by stimuli you are not even conscious of). Our memory system is a web of associations and priming is the awakening or activating of certain associations. Experiment: people were asked to complete sentences containing the words old or wise . Afterwards, these people were observed to walk slower than people not primed with age-related words. Priming can affect behavior like walking, but it can also affect our goals to achieve and get along with others. Also occurs when stimuli are presented subliminally (unseen wrong color name interferes with color identification) Much of our social information processing is automatic. It is unintentional, out of sight and without awareness. Preconceptions especially matter when info is subject to multiple interpretations.