Priming and its prevalence in UX
What is Priming
The idea of priming got stuck in my head after reading Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, a book that dwells on our two modes of thinking.
Below is the definition of Priming (from PsychologyToday https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/priming):
“Priming is a phenomenon in which exposure to a stimulus, such as a word or an image, influences how one responds to a subsequent, related stimulus.”
Upon reading and doing some exercises in the book, and after reading up some more on the topic, I was quite taken aback in the notion that I am not always in control of what I think when I making decisions. Later on, with more pondering regarding the topic, my mind drifted to the notion that the work that I do also involves priming, directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously. And then I later realized that some Dark Patterns are taking advantage of priming!
To give a little bit more context about priming, consider the following example:
Step 1: Read the following words:
PRIME CONSCIOUS CLEAR EAT DEFEND
Step 2: Complete the word below:
SO_P
You are likely to complete the word above as SOUP. The phenomenon explains this that because of reading the word EAT first, you (your mind) are primed to think of words related to eating/food which is SOUP. Now, if we replace the word with WASH, you are likely to answer with the word SOAP.
Priming can also treat make you feel and act in a certain way. Consider the remarkable study of the “Florida effect”, excerpt taken from Thinking Fast and Slow:
“In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators asked students at New York University — most aged eighteen to twenty-two — to assemble four-word sentences from a set of five words (for example, “finds he it yellow instantly”). For one group of students, half the scrambled sentences contained words associated with the elderly, such as Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, or wrinkle. When they had completed that task, the young participants were sent out to do another experiment in an office down the hall. That short walk was what the experiment was about. The researchers unobtrusively measured the time it took people to get from one end of the corridor to the other. As Bargh had predicted, the young people who had fashioned a sentence from words with an elderly theme walked down the hallway significantly more slowly than the others.
The “Florida effect” involves two stages of priming. First, the set of words primes thoughts of old age, though the word old is never mentioned; second, these thoughts prime a behavior, walking slowly, which is associated with old age. All this happens without any awareness. When they were questioned afterward, none of[…]”
Excerpt From: Kahneman, Daniel. “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”
Quite fascinating, no?
Priming in UX
It is safe to say that I’ve unconsciously primed an interaction and/or visual design regularly, and I think that it’s also safe to say that many of us have:
- Applied on hover change the cursor (Availability Heuristic)
- Used the color blue for links (Exposure Effect)
- Used confetti, balloons, or party artifacts in an illustration (Context Effect)
It’s also safe to say (and admit), that I’ve done priming consciously:
- Used the color green to denote trust, wealth, etc
- Used regular web design patterns of headers, footers, where they are usually placed
- Used warning icons and the color red for errors and issues
If you think hard about it, most decision branch you design may involve priming. It’s how you handle it is where it becomes interesting.
Priming in Dark Patterns
There are several categories of dark patterns that use priming to coerce users into doing something they don’t intend to do. Urgency, Social proof, and Scarcity all dabble in priming in a harmful way. Take Urgency for example. Users are being imposed on a deadline for a sale or deal, pushing them towards purchasing something.
The Good and the Bad of Priming or the Ethics of Priming
It’s quite fascinating and somewhat unsettling the power we designers have — consciously and unconsciously when we design things. We should try to be aware of how our designs can affect our users. We might even be shooting ourselves in the foot unknowingly for some design implementations that affect the result we’d like to achieve.
Priming in itself is a phenomenon, a result of a scenario. That makes priming neither good nor bad. It’s the scenario — preconceived or not to result relatively to it, that makes it good or bad. In that sense, the good in priming is that it can be used in “good” and the bad in priming is that it can be used in “bad”.
