From student to superhero: Situational primes shape future helping

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Abstract

The present research uses priming techniques to modify commitment to and engagement in future helping behavior. Relative to a control condition, people primed with the exemplar Superman saw themselves as less likely (Studies 1a and 1b), and participants primed with the category superhero saw themselves as more likely (Study 1a), to help in hypothetical situations. Study 2 extended these effects to real-world planned helping behavior, by demonstrating that these primes impacted commitment to future volunteerism. Finally, Study 3 showed that these changes in initial commitment impacted volunteering behavior up to three months after initial exposure. These results demonstrate that fleeting situational primes can impact not only spontaneous behavior, but also future behavior.

Section snippets

Overview

In a series of studies, we used situational primes designed to elicit increased or decreased helping behavior. Participants were primed to think about a helpful category (e.g., superheroes), or an exemplar member of that category (e.g., Superman). We had three primary goals in the studies reported below. First, we wanted to demonstrate that situational primes can both make people think of themselves as more helpful and cause them to predict more helpful behavior in the future (Studies 1a and

Method

Fifty-six Princeton undergraduates participated in the experiment as partial fulfillment of a course requirement, were recruited via electronic mail and telephone, and were scheduled in groups of three to participate in the experiment. Participants were seated in three separate quiet rooms, and completed large questionnaire packets containing the manipulation and dependent measures. Participants were told to answer every question and to complete the questionnaire in order, without returning to

Method

Having demonstrated the effect, we next wanted to replicate the effect with subtler priming, in this case a sentence-unscrambling task similar to that used in previous priming studies (e.g., Macrae & Johnston, 1998), and show similar effects on predicted helping behavior in a different situation. We again chose to use the exemplar Superman (because of the nature of the procedure, we were unable to replicate the category prime condition). As in the first study, our primary dependent variable

Method

Forty-nine Princeton undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology class participated as part of a classroom exercise. We used the same thought-listing task as in Study 1a: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions and given 4 min to list features of a superhero or a student dorm room. After collecting these materials, the instructor introduced a confederate posing as a representative of Community House, who gave a brief (30 s) summary of the organization, an actual

Study 3

In the final study, we sought to replicate the effects reported in Study 2 and extend those findings by demonstrating an impact on actual future behavior. Using a similar design, participants completed the priming manipulation and a seemingly unrelated questionnaire soliciting volunteers for a campus community service group. Participants that volunteered for the fictitious group were contacted three months later and asked to attend an organizational meeting for the group. Frequency of

General discussion

Using a novel construct, we were able to demonstrate that primes can influence predictions of, commitment to, and engagement in future helping behavior.

Conclusion

On first blush the fact that simple primes can impact behavior three months after the fact conflicts with a view of behavior as resulting from conscious deliberation and intention. Not only can spontaneous, laboratory-induced behaviors be elicited without mindful processing, but behavior far removed from the laboratory setting can be influenced as well. This is the strong version of unconscious intent, where actions are caused by unconscious mechanisms of mind (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999), and

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  • Cited by (0)

    The authors thank Kevin Carlsmith, Robyn Leboeuf, Benoît Monin, and Sam Sommers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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