Adirian comments on Priming and Contamination - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2007 02:23AM

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Comment author: Adirian 10 October 2007 08:03:20PM 6 points [-]

Is it a statistical artifact, however, or a genuine intellectual one? That is, those who genuinely have no clue whatsoever in regard to the number of UN nations in Africa might take information about it as a weak sort of evidence - I don't know, so I'll go with a figure I've encountered that is associated with this question. Similarly, someone who is not familiar with pricing may see a "Limit 12" and believe, because of the presence of the sign, that the pricing - regardless of what it is, because they don't have comparative information - is extremely good.

Which is to say, your examples may come from subject-matter ignorance rather than priming, and conceptual priming may not be quite as contaminative as these studies suggest.