"Replicable effects of primes on human behavior": Correction to Payne et al. (2016)

Reports an error in "Replicable effects of primes on human behavior" by B. Keith Payne, Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi and Chris Loersch (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2016[Oct], Vol 145[10], 1269-1279). In the article, the graph in Figure 5 did not contain the asterisk mentioned in the figure caption, which was intended to indicate a statistically significant difference between bet and pass prime. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2016-46925-002.) The effect of primes (i.e., incidental cues) on human behavior has become controversial. Early studies reported counterintuitive findings, suggesting that primes can shape a wide range of human behaviors. Recently, several studies failed to replicate some earlier priming results, raising doubts about the reliability of those effects. We present a within-subjects procedure for priming behavior, in which participants decide whether to bet or pass on each trial of a gambling game. We report 6 replications (N = 988) showing that primes consistently affected gambling decisions when the decision was uncertain. Decisions were influenced by primes presented visibly, with a warning to ignore the primes (Experiments 1 through 3) and with subliminally presented masked primes (Experiment 4). Using a process dissociation procedure, we found evidence that primes influenced responses through both automatic and controlled processes (Experiments 5 and 6). Results provide evidence that primes can reliably affect behavior, under at least some conditions, without intention. The findings suggest that the psychological question of whether behavior priming effects are real should be separated from methodological issues affecting how easily particular experimental designs will replicate. (PsycINFO Database Record