Cognitive Priming
Psychology: AQA A Level, topic 15.2.17
Media and Cognitive Priming
Media can have implications on the scripts we call on in certain situations. Repeatedly consuming violent media can lead to aggressive cognitive priming.
Scripts
- Cognitive priming refers to the way in which violent images provide us with ready-made scripts about aggression which are stored in memory and triggered when we perceive aggressive cues in a situation.
- Repeated viewing of aggressive media, especially game playing, can provide us with a script about how violence situations take place.
Priming
- Huesmann (1988) suggests that these scripts are stored in memory and so we become ready, or primed, to be aggressive.
- The process of priming is mostly automatic.
- It can direct our behaviour without us being aware of it, and the script is triggered when we encounter cues in the situation that we perceive as aggressive.
Fischer and Greitemeyer (2006)
- Fischer and Greitemeyer (2006) looked at priming of aggressive scripts in memory by investigating song lyrics.
- Male participants listened to songs featuring aggressively derogatory lyrics about women.
- They were compared with when they listened to neutral lyrics.
- Participants subsequently recalled more negative qualities about women and behaved more aggressively towards a female confederate.
Women
- This procedure was replicated with female participants, using men-hating song lyrics, with similar results.
Cognitive Priming Study
There are potentially life-saving benefits in understanding how cognitive priming influences aggression in the real life situations.
Cues
- Whether aggressive situations break out into violence often depends on how the participants interpret environmental cues.
- This in turn depends on the cognitive scripts they have stored in memory.
Bushman and Anderson (2002)
- Bushman and Anderson (2002) suggest that someone who habitually watches violent media, accesses stored aggressive scripts more readily.
- This means they are more likely to:
- Interpret cues as aggressive,
- Resort to a violent solution,
- Fail to consider the alternatives.
Conclusions
- This explanation provides a possible means by which violent media could trigger aggressive behaviour through the priming of cognitive scripts.
Uses
- Effective interventions could potentially reduce aggressive behaviour by challenging hostile cognitive biases and encouraging habitual violence media users to consider alternatives to aggression, such as humour and negotiation.
Test yourself on Cognitive Priming
What form of media did Fischer and Greitemeyer (2006) use to study priming of aggressive scripts in memory?
Which factor was changed when Fischer and Greitemeyer's (2006) study was replicated?
What is NOT a trait of those who habitually watch violent media (according to Bushman and Anderson, 2002) ?
What is NOT a potential outcome of new interventions developed from increased understanding of cognitive priming?