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Shore, Sam (2025) Priming and its Effect on Attitudes. Undergraduate thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.
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Abstract
Aims: This study examines the impact of priming on self-reported prosocial attitudes, focusing on whether exposure to prosocial or antisocial primes influences attitudes toward helping behaviour.
Method: Using a randomized, between-subjects design, 97 participants completed a Scrambled Sentence Task (SST) featuring prosocial, antisocial, or neutral primes, followed by the Helping Attitudes Scale (HAS) both pre- and post-priming.
Results: A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed no significant interaction between priming conditions and changes in HAS scores, suggesting that priming did not significantly alter self-reported helping attitudes. Visual inspection of the data further indicated that a weak positive correlation between age and HAS scores was driven by outliers, limiting its interpretability.
Conclusion: The findings challenge prior research indicating strong behavioural effects of priming, suggesting that while priming may influence unconscious behaviours, its impact on explicit self-reported attitudes may be limited. Methodological factors, such as the online study format and potential distractions, may have contributed to these results. This study highlights the need for further research into the boundary conditions of priming. Future studies should integrate implicit behavioural measures alongside self-reports to capture a more nuanced understanding of priming effects.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Undergraduate) |
|---|---|
| Supervisors: | Name Email Thornberry, Conor UNSPECIFIED |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > Psychology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > Psychology > Cognition |
| Divisions: | School of Business (- 2025) > BA (Honours) in Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Ciara O'Brien |
| Date Deposited: | 11 Nov 2025 14:17 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Nov 2025 14:17 |
| URI: | https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/8914 |
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