This post will discuss methods that can be used to test subjects in priming and related psychological experiments.
Some of the difficulties that arise in many cognitive psychological studies can be attributed to the large amount of variables that may influence results. For example, when measuring the emotional or motivational state of a subject, researchers must carefully target their measure of this so as not to include irrelevant material that may influence their results. Secondly, cognitive psychology researchers must consider the intrinsic subjectivity of their field. If two similar labs were conducting similar research on the perception of an emotion such as happiness, their results could be completely different depending on their method of measurement. To reduce the potential of error due to the above factors, researchers have historically used well-targeted measures that can be easily replicated. In some branches of psychology, there are "standard" tests (that give certain scores) used for studies of a certain nature. You can find some of these listed here. Here are a couple interactive tests if you're in the mood: test your memory and reaction time here. The two links above should give you an idea of what psychological testing can look like.
A standard spatial reasoning test: which cube unfolds into the shape above?
Historically, priming has involved tests of reaction time, spatial reasoning, emotional state, memory, behavior, persistence, intellectual arousal, and the list could go on. For instance, when the Mozart effect was first officially "discovered," Rauscher et al. 1993 measured spatial reasoning. With the advancement of technology, brain scans like EEGs (electroencephalograms) measuring neural activity are becoming increasingly common. An interesting study in 2007 led by Mathias Pessiglione used brain scans to give empirical evidence for the influence of money on motivation (PDF found here).
An example EEG from Wikipedia
Anyways, what I think I'll be measuring is emotional state (which I should be able to connect to intellectual arousal), persistence on a difficult task, perhaps the results of that task, and attention levels during a short educational video. I'm still in the process of reading through studies testing similar things for ideas, but I'm hoping to find an appropriate test for emotion/intellectual arousal that's been used several times before.
I'm looking to get my tests completed in the next few weeks, so check back for updates! Thanks!
Now that we know that priming works from the massive amounts of past research done on it, the next step is finding a method to conduct tests with. To do that, a reliable, easily-accessible way to prime people must be chosen.
Here are some things to consider:
Should subjects be unconsciously or consciously primed?
What music should be used?
How long should subjects listen to it?
What words should be used?
How will subjects be exposed to the words?
Should subjects be exposed to primes as a group or individually?
And here are my thoughts.
Unconscious vs. Conscious Primes
This really only applies to priming visually with words. While many psychological studies involving words as primes have been conducted with "subliminal" visual stimuli (below the threshold of conscious perception), all the music studies I've read have used music that subjects were consciously aware of. At this point, you might be wondering about how subliminal visual stimuli work, or even what they are in the first place. Well, in the 1900s, researchers found that messages (most commonly consisting of words) can be flashed on a screen so fast that onlookers don't consciously perceive them, but not so fast that their brains don't process them. This unconscious processing of subliminal stimuli has been the basis for many, many priming studies in which these stimuli have had an effect on subjects.
Because of this, one of my first concerns for my own research was whether I would have to prime subjects unconsciously. However, upon doing a bit of digging, I found study that solved all of my problems in this area. In 1992, John Bargh published this study: Does Subliminality Matter to Social Psychology? Awareness of the Stimulus versus Awareness of its Influence. According to Bargh, it doesn't matter if a prime is unconsciously or consciously introduced. As long as subjects don't know the intended effect of a prime, the prime should work. That made my job easier, conscious primes are much easier to implement.
What Music Should be Used?
At first, scientists thought that the Mozart effect was limited to Mozart music. Unsurprisingly, this proved to be a false assumption, and researchers have generally agreed that any sort of happy, upbeat music similar to Mozart music had a similar effect to Mozart. However, in spirit of the first study (Rauscher et al. 1993), I'm considering this:
Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major
Or another widely-used (and very famous!) piece in psychological studies involving music:
Vivaldi's Spring from The Four Seasons
Both pieces are common in studies similar to what I'll be doing.
How Long Should Subjects Listen?
This one's easier: nearly all studies testing the Mozart effect have exposed subjects to ten minutes of music.
What Words Should be Used?
Given my limited experience with psychology, the words I'm thinking of using will come from past studies of a similar nature. One thing to keep in mind is that the words and the music should prime for similar target effects. If you read my background page, you'll remember that the Mozart effect arises primarily because of intellectual arousal and positive emotion associated with music. Hence, the words I use should prime for similar intellectual arousal and positive emotion. Past studies have used words such as "interested," "desire," "willing," "succeed," "strive," "achieve," and "master."
How Will Subjects Be Exposed to the Words?
Ideally, subjects should be exposed to the words for around ten minutes (similarly to the music) and interact in some way with them for most of that time. Historically, a relatively common way to do this has been through puzzles. For example, word matching tasks, crosswords, or word-searches are all options. For these tasks, however, there is a level of mental exertion required, which could undesirably affect results. Perhaps a reading passage with the prime words interspersed might be slightly preferable. Regardless of which method I use, past studies have shown that priming effects are still significant with each.
Should Subjects be Exposed to Primes as Groups or as Individuals?
As of now, I'm thinking I'll do both and compare results. Several studies have suggested that the Mozart effect is weaker when groups of people listen to music and then are tested. The research on this is still sparse, so I'm still not sure what to expect. Perhaps the group environment is simply distracting. Or maybe people are motivated to do better when others are around. I'm hoping to find out.
Keeping in mind everything above, my next step is to decide on testing methods to obtain data and results, which I'll post for later this week.
Ever since beginning to look into psychology, I've thought of it as something that can be useful to anyone, anytime, anywhere. The more you know about how the human mind works, the more you know about yourself and everyone around you. Because of this, I've chosen to study psychology in my senior research project. Perhaps at the end of my study, I'll have made some interesting psychological discoveries that can be useful to everyone's daily life.
Let's jump right in. Here are a couple situations that you'll probably find pretty familiar.
1. Remember that class where your eyelids seemed to have weights attached to them and you wondered why the hands on the clock behind you were moving so slowly? You might have resisted the temptation to pass out on your desk only to find your head is bobbing up and down every so often as you drifted in and out of sleep. You reassured yourself that you'd been learning or perhaps listening even though your eyes were closed, but let's be honest, you hadn't been.2. Now think back to that class where you were feeling pretty good about learning. You were excited to jot down every word on the powerpoint in front of you and you were determined to take the most aesthetic set of notes you'd ever taken. Learning is so fun, you told yourself, and you probably aced the quiz on whatever it is you learned that day.
We all want to be able to have more of the second situation and less of the first, but how can we make this change? What's the difference between the two situations? Well, maybe you forgot your morning coffee in the first situation, or maybe you just forgot to go to bed on time, but what about those days where you have one class where you're alert and as ready to learn as ever, and the next class is the complete opposite? I believe that there may be psychological solutions to this dilemma.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I can cure fatigue or lack of interest with a bit of psychology I've researched in high school. I'm simply hoping to increase the likelihood of situation two and decrease the likelihood of situation one in the classroom. My research will attempt to do this through a psychological phenomenon called priming. Here's a basic definition of priming:
"Priming is what we call it when exposure to some thing influences the behavior of an individual later on, without that individual being aware that the first thing is guiding their behavior to a certain extent."
Click here to see where I got that definition and for more detail with some cool examples.
So priming is a pretty cool concept, and a fellow student remarked that it was kind of like simple (albeit unreliable) mind control.
If you think about it, priming is used everywhere in our daily lives. Have you ever spent more than usual on wine at a fancy restaurant? Perhaps the restaurant was playing classical music, subconsciously pushing you towards a higher bill at the end of the meal. Classical music has been shown to be an effective 'prime' that gives people a tendency to spend more on wine. Here's the study. There are even several studies on how music can influence the way wine tastes!
What else can priming do? Studies have gone as far as to give evidence that priming with money can make people act more selfishly or that priming with words related to the elderly can even make people walk more slowly! These studies are questioned today since they haven't yet been replicated, but one priming experiment with racial stereotypes and academic performance has been widely accepted as true. Basically, adding a question about race before a standardized test significantly worsened African-American students' performance on that test compared to white students of similar previous testing scores. (Feel free to read more on the study here.)
All of this research on priming gave me reason to ask myself the following question: what if priming could be used to change students' attitudes in class? Maybe listening to some upbeat classical music in the background before class started could unconsciously prime for alertness. Maybe it could give students a feeling of sophistication (which is most likely what it did for wine buyers in the aforementioned experiment) that inspires them to want to become as educated as possible and have a 'situation two' type of class. Maybe visual priming with words associated with the same concepts of alertness and sophistication or others such as drive and success could give students subconscious incentive to pay more attention in class.
To conduct this research, I will have the pleasure of working with NAU MS Candidate Mackenzie Onofry and our generous math and statistics teacher here at BASIS, Chris Lamb.
I can't guarantee that my ideas will work, but if you're interested in the possibility, this blog is for you.
P.S. For a bunch of background info that will help you understand everything in this blog, follow the link on the sidebar to Everything You Need To Know. Read this!
