phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | nonconscious social behaviour priming— “Priming or nonconscious activation of social knowledge structures has produced a plethora of rather amazing findings over the past 25 years: priming a single social concept such as aggressive can have multiple effects across a wide array of psychological systems, such as perception, motivation, behavior, and evaluation.” | |
| claim-type | mechanism— “Thus, several disparate areas of research and social thought lead us to the same conclusion: that one reason for the multiple parallel effects of our priming manipulations is that we might not be priming single concepts, but rather conceptual structures, whether they be called metaphors, roles, perspectives, or mindsets.” | |
| method — evidence | — “It is suggested that models of complex conceptual structures ( Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 ), language use in real-life conversational settings ( Clark, 1996 ), and speech production ( Dell, 1986 ) might hold the key for solving these two important ‘second-generation’ research problems.” | |
| transfer | from psycholinguistics / speech-production research: cascade models of language production are imported wholesale as a model for how parallel primed responses become serial social behaviour— “Accordingly, recent work in our lab has begun to apply cascade models of language production (e.g., Dell, 1986 ; Morsella & Miozzo, 2002 ; Navarette & Costa, 2004 ) to these next-generation questions concerning social behavior production ( Morsella, Levine, & Bargh, 2005 ).” | transfers[0] |
| transfer | from cognitive linguistics and the study of language use: Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual-metaphor theory, Clark's analysis of conversational language use, and Dell's speech-production model are proposed as the solution to social psychology's own two problems— “It is suggested that models of complex conceptual structures ( Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 ), language use in real-life conversational settings ( Clark, 1996 ), and speech production ( Dell, 1986 ) might hold the key for solving these two important ‘second-generation’ research problems.” | transfers[1] |
| transfer | from language-comprehension research: the paper traces the concept of priming itself as an import into social cognition from Lashley's analysis of language— “The notion of priming originated in Karl Lashley’s (1951) analysis of language comprehension; how we need to hold some sentential information temporarily in mind in order to comprehend it.” | transfers[2] |
| mechanism | An active goal raises the accessibility of goal-relevant representations, so attention selects only a fraction of the environment and only those selected stimuli can prime a response.— “An active goal (e.g., to find something to eat) caused the mental representations relevant to attaining the goal (e.g., restaurants, bodegas) to become somewhat more active than usual and thus more ready to become activated by corresponding stimuli in the environment.” | mechanisms[0] |
| mechanism | Activation cascades from the conceptual-semantic level onto the action-planning level, so perceiving an object automatically brings up the action plans associated with it.— “A cascade cognitive architecture suggests that the semantic activation arising from perceiving an object automatically leads to the activation of the various action plans with which the object is associated.” | mechanisms[1] |
| mechanism | Infants internalise both sides of routine interactions with caregivers, which is how complex role/perspective structures — the things later primed — come to be represented at all.— “According to this view, the experience of the infant and young child with its caregivers leads to the development of internalized roles or perspectives , such that participation with the care-taker in events such as taking a bath, or playing a new game, involves—indeed, requires—the ability to know both complementary roles” | mechanisms[2] |
| mechanism | Later, abstract concepts are scaffolded metaphorically onto earlier directly-experienced structures such as spatial orientation, so priming the earlier structure carries into the later one.— “Other conceptual structures are then built or scaffolded onto the direct structures in a metaphorical fashion (e.g., ‘I’m feeling up today’).” | mechanisms[3] |
| mechanism | A THEORY OF DEFINITION, QUOTED APPROVINGLY, IN A PRIMING RETROSPECTIVE: `Concepts are not defined solely in terms of inherent properties; instead, they are defined primarily in terms of interactional properties.` If that is right, a definition is not a list of features a thing has but a description of what it does with other things - and two fields that use a term in different interactions have different concepts even when their feature lists agree.— “As Lakoff and Johnson (1980 , p. 125) argued, ‘an account of how people understand their experiences requires a view of definition very different from the standard account … On our account, individual concepts are not defined in an isolated fashion, but rather in terms of their roles in natural kinds of experiences. Concepts are not defined… | mechanisms[4] |
| mechanism | AND THE MECHANISM BY WHICH A METAPHOR CARRIES A STRUCTURE: experiential gestalts `emerge from interaction, from constant negotiation with the environment and other people ... We understand experience metaphorically when we use a gestalt from one domain of experience to structure experience in another domain.` This is why an imported metaphor needs no glossary: the reader already holds the relations, and importing the word imports them.— “They argue for the existence of experiential gestalts , or complex conceptual structures that ‘emerge from interaction, from constant negotiation with the environment and other people … We understand our experience directly when we see it as being structured coherently in terms of gestalts that have emerged directly from interaction with and… | mechanisms[5] |
| mechanism | A CONCEPT'S ABSENCE MEASURED BY AN INDEX: `In Greg Murphy's (2002) otherwise masterful ... Big Book of Concepts, for example, there is NO MENTION of the development or nature of behavioral or action concepts - the term does not even appear in the index.` The field's canonical reference work is used as the instrument, and the reading is taken from the back of it.— “In Greg Murphy’s (2002) otherwise masterful, and certainly well-named ‘Big Book of Concepts,’ for example, there is no mention of the development or nature of behavioral or action concepts—the term does not even appear in the index” | mechanisms[6] |
| mechanism | AND THE FIELD'S DEFAULT THEORY OF CONCEPTS NAMED AND DATED: `cognitive psychology is dominated by the old idea that concepts are all literal and disembodied.` Quoted from the 2003 afterword to a 1980 book, inside a 2006 paper, as the position the author is departing from.— “As Lakoff & Johnson (1980/2003 , p. 269) noted recently, ‘cognitive psychology is dominated by the old idea that concepts are all literal and disembodied” | mechanisms[7] |
| builds-on | Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Clark, 1996; Dell, 1986— “It is suggested that models of complex conceptual structures ( Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 ), language use in real-life conversational settings ( Clark, 1996 ), and speech production ( Dell, 1986 ) might hold the key for solving these two important ‘second-generation’ research problems.” | claim_relations[0] |
| extends | Trope and Liberman (2003) temporal construal theory— “The metaphor model also makes directional predictions that temporal-construal or construal-level theory does not (physical distance should prime psychological distance effects—e.g., time—but psychological distance priming should not affect physical distance judgments; see Boroditsky, 2000 ), so it should be possible to empirically assess… | claim_relations[1] |
| builds-on | Boroditsky (2000)— “Finally, it should also be noted that Boroditsky’s (2000) findings can be seen as well as support for the idea that fundamental social perspectives or ‘deep ideologies’ as described by Tetlock (2003) do exist, as complex conceptual structures, and can be primed—that is, activated and put into operation nonconsciously by environmental… | claim_relations[2] |
| sense | priming, as this paper defines it - THREE CONDITIONS, one of them a required failure: the representation is activated INCIDENTALLY or unobtrusively, in ONE context, and influences what comes next WITHOUT THE PERSON'S AWARENESS OF THIS INFLUENCE. Note what is not in the definition: no mechanism, no time course, no claim about which representation. The scope is set as wide as it can go - `nearly all forms of social representation can be primed`— “Nearly all forms of social representation can be primed, it seems—activated incidentally or unobtrusively in one context, to influence what comes next without the person’s awareness of this influence” | senses[0] |
| sense | THE ANSWER TO THE TITLE, and it revises twenty-five years of a literature in the past perfect: our priming manipulations ARE, AND HAVE BEEN, priming more than single concepts. Not a proposal to study something new but a claim that the field has been describing its own manipulations wrongly all along - written by the author of much of that literature. The unit of analysis changes; the word `priming` does not— “The basic idea is that our social-psychological priming manipulations are, and have been, priming more than single concepts. It is hard to see how a single concept (as opposed to a conceptual structure, such as in Lakoff and Johnson’s, 1980 theory) can do all of the work required of it to account for the multiple, simultaneous effects the… | senses[1] |
| sense | `childhood's end` - the field's own developmental self-assessment, and the frame for the whole review: twenty-five years of amazing findings are treated as a childhood that has to end, with the effects having been studied IN ISOLATION FROM EACH OTHER in laboratories and now needing to be put back into a world where they all arrive at once— “But we may have reached childhood’s end, so to speak, and need now to move on to research questions such as how these multiple effects of single primes occur (the generation problem); next, how these multiple simultaneous priming influences in the environment get distilled into nonconscious social action that has to happen serially, in real… | senses[2] |
| sense | the generation and reduction problems as an INVERSE PAIR - the paper's closing formulation makes the symmetry explicit: how the FEW (primes) produce the MANY (parallel response potentialities), and then how the many get reduced back into the few so that action can happen in real time. One paradigm, two open problems, stated as each other's mirror— “we need to understand better how the few (primes) can produce the many (parallel response potentialities), and then how the many get reduced into the few, in order for us to act in real time” | senses[3] |
| sense | the reduction problem is where the LABORATORY ITSELF is named as the limitation: it is `especially salient when one considers the busy, stimulus-rich real world outside of the laboratory, with all of the priming possibilities available`. The design that made the effects visible - one prime, one quiet room - is the design that hides the question of which prime wins— “It is as if the mind constantly explodes the outside world into multiple parallel possibilities for action, but must then reduce and distill these back for use in a world in which you can only do one thing at a time. The reduction problem is especially salient when one considers the busy, stimulus-rich real world outside of the laboratory… | senses[4] |
| sense | `definition` - THE STANDARD ACCOUNT, REJECTED IN THIS PAPER'S OWN VOICE BY QUOTATION: `an account of how people understand their experiences requires a view of definition very different from the standard account ... individual concepts are not defined in an isolated fashion, but rather in terms of their roles in natural kinds of experiences.` A claim about what a definition IS, in the most-cited retrospective on priming.— “As Lakoff and Johnson (1980 , p. 125) argued, ‘an account of how people understand their experiences requires a view of definition very different from the standard account … On our account, individual concepts are not defined in an isolated fashion, but rather in terms of their roles in natural kinds of experiences. Concepts are not defined… | senses[5] |
| sense | `concept` - AS THE COGNITIVE TRADITION HAS IT: `Concepts, in this research tradition, ARE NOT FOR DOING, THEY ARE FOR KNOWING.` The paper's one-line diagnosis of why the concept literature could not help it.— “Concepts, in this research tradition, are not for doing , they are for knowing” | senses[6] |
| differs in | conceptual structure —contrasted-with→ single concept — WHETHER ONE ACTIVATION CAN REACH SEVERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEMS AT ONCE - a single concept cannot do the work required of it, a conceptual structure of the kind Lakoff & Johnson described can. The replacement is made on grounds of explanatory capacity, not on evidence that the structure was activated— “It is hard to see how a single concept (as opposed to a conceptual structure, such as in Lakoff and Johnson’s, 1980 theory) can do all of the work required of it to account for the multiple, simultaneous effects the same prime can have”— “It is hard to see how a single concept” | concept_edges[0] |
| note | conceptual structure —contrasted-with→ single concept — THE PAPER'S CENTRAL MOVE, and the whole answer to its title. Confidence 0.95 because the contrast is the sentence's explicit subject rather than my reading of it.— “It is hard to see how a single concept (as opposed to a conceptual structure, such as in Lakoff and Johnson’s, 1980 theory) can do all of the work required of it to account for the multiple, simultaneous effects the same prime can have” | concept_edges[0] |
| weight | conceptual structure —contrasted-with→ single concept — 0.95 | concept_edges[0] |
| audit | priming —operationalised-as→ social knowledge structures — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its span and kept, but the span glosses priming as nonconscious activation of social knowledge structures; operationalised-as is loose. | concept_edges[1] |
| note | priming —operationalised-as→ social knowledge structures — The abstract's first clause treats 'priming' and 'nonconscious activation of social knowledge structures' as the same thing named twice - which is what makes the later revision of the UNIT a change to the construct rather than a change of topic. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[1] |
| weight | priming —operationalised-as→ social knowledge structures — 0.85 Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[1] |
| differs in | generation problem —distinct-from→ reduction problem — DIRECTION - generation is one prime producing many simultaneous effects; reduction is many simultaneous effects having to become one action in real time. The same bottleneck seen from either side Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[2] |
| note | generation problem —distinct-from→ reduction problem — Both labels are coined in this sentence, in the abstract. The corpus should be able to retrieve the paper that NAMED a field's open problems as easily as one that reported an effect, which is why they are nodes and not just senses. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[2] |
| weight | generation problem —distinct-from→ reduction problem — 0.9 Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[2] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | The dependence of real-world goal pursuit on other people's cooperation is named as the largest threat to the generality of the laboratory findings. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[0] |
| limitation | The field's empirical demonstrations have outrun its ability to say what is being primed or how the effects are produced. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[1] |
| limitation | The proposed role of selective attention in filtering potential primes is stated as expectation rather than established result. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[2] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | The paper's central claim is that priming manipulations have never been activating single concepts but whole conceptual structures — metaphors, roles, perspectives or mindsets. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | Because a single prime produces its perceptual, evaluative, motivational and behavioural effects in parallel, which effect a study 'finds' is an artefact of the dependent variable the experimenter chose to measure. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | The role/persona account is offered as the answer to what priming studies have actually been activating: not discrete acts but a whole perspective with its goals and values. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[2] |
| finding | Goal-driven selective attention is proposed as the first stage of the solution to the reduction problem, filtering which of the many available environmental primes can act at all. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[3] |
| finding | When primed responses conflict, the person's currently active goal or motivational state is said to prevail over the other activated tendencies. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[4] |
| finding | The paper suggests the mechanisms of language production and of social behaviour production may be one and the same. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[5] |
| quantity | 71% — proportion of participants in Boroditsky's (2000) study, as reported here, who interpreted ambiguous time information consistently with a preceding spatial prime Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[0] |
| quantity | 64% / 47% — the asymmetry the paper reports from Boroditsky's replication: space primes shifted thinking about time, but time primes did not shift thinking about space Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[1] |
| quantity | 15% — the share of people the paper states are susceptible to post-hypnotic suggestion, used to argue priming is not simply hypnosis Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[2] |
| definition | priming Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[0] |
| definition | the generation problem Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[1] |
| definition | the reduction problem Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[2] |
| definition | the construal alternative Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[3] |
| definition | the product tradition Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[4] |
| definition | the action tradition Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[5] |
| definition | experiential gestalts Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[6] |
| concept | priming — not defined in this paper's own words; defined here by three conditions at once - INCIDENTAL activation, in ONE context, influencing a LATER one, with the person unaware of the influence. The third is a required failure: if the person can report the influence it is not this Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[0] |
| concept | social knowledge structures — not defined in this paper's own words; what the abstract says priming activates - and the paper's whole argument is that the STRUCTURE, not the single concept, is the unit that has been activated all along Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[1] |
| concept | single concept — not defined in this paper's own words; the unit the field believed it was priming, and the one this paper retires: it cannot do the work required to produce several qualitatively different effects at once Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[2] |
| concept | conceptual structure — not defined in this paper's own words; the replacement unit, borrowed from Lakoff & Johnson's account of metaphor - a structure rich enough that one priming stimulus can reach perception, motivation, behaviour and evaluation without needing four separate mechanisms Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[3] |
| concept | generation problem — not defined in this paper's own words; the field's first named open problem: how ONE prime produces MANY qualitatively different effects at once. Named, labelled and left open in the abstract of a review by the paradigm's own author Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[4] |
| concept | reduction problem — not defined in this paper's own words; its inverse, and the harder one: the many parallel activations have to become ONE action, because a person can only do one thing at a time. The problem the laboratory hides by priming a single thing in a quiet room Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[5] |
| concept | interactional properties — not defined in this paper's own words; what Lakoff and Johnson say concepts are PRIMARILY defined by - as against inherent properties, and quoted approvingly here as the alternative to the standard account of definition Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[6] |
| concept | experiential gestalts — not defined in this paper's own words; complex conceptual structures that emerge from interaction and negotiation; understanding one domain metaphorically means using a gestalt from another domain to structure it Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[7] |
When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.
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and is linked, not reproduced. Excerpts shown are short quotations for identification and verification.
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