The impact of open and closed mindsets on evaluative priming

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Experimental Psychology

Background:

• The evaluative priming paradigm is a key tool for understanding automatic social cognition.
• Mindsets, such as open versus closed, can significantly modulate cognitive processes.
• The interplay between task fluency and mindset in shaping evaluative judgments remains an area for exploration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how prime fluency influences mindset (open vs. closed).
• To examine the impact of these mindsets on congruity effects within the evaluative priming paradigm.
• To determine if task completion or ongoing processing is key to mindset formation.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments manipulated prime fluency using gradual demasking and color contrast.
• Participants completed an evaluative priming task with primes varying in fluency.
• A follow-up experiment aimed to rule out attentional processes as an explanation.

Main Results:

• Robust congruity effects were observed specifically with disfluent primes.
• Fluent primes did not yield significant congruity effects.
• Results suggest mindset, not attention, mediates the observed effects.

Conclusions:

• Prime disfluency induces an open mindset, enhancing congruity effects in evaluative priming.
• Prime fluency plays a critical role in determining the magnitude of evaluative priming effects.
• Mindsets formed during mental task engagement are crucial for understanding evaluative judgments.