Elderly related words provoke slow walk
An experiment in 1996 by John Bargh et Al investigated whether exposing people to words portrayed as being old would effect the participants behaviour - walking. They found that because the participants were exposed to these elderly words, they subsequently walked away from the laboratory more slowly and elderly-like. This experiment is related to 'social priming' which means we are much more susceptible to influence than we realise. The study has been attempted again on different occasions and some have been unsuccessful in finding any results similar to the original, where as others have been successful in finding similar results. This has caused much debate and disagreement over whether the results found in John Bargh et Al's research has any significance or validity at all.
Such interest.
ReplyDeleteThere was a programme that was done where Judith Rodin (Langer and Rodin) was involved a couple of years ago by the BBC and they got celebrities to live like they did back in the 70's and by acting like they were when they were younger and re living their life then they became much more active both physically and mentally. In relation to your criticisms of Bargh's research what confounding variables could have been playing a role?
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