The Reality Distortion Field Is Real 270
TimeZone writes "Apparently, even subliminal exposure to the Apple logo can make you 'think different.' Researchers at Duke University subjected participants to subliminal images of the iconic Apple and IBM logos (during what subjects thought was a visual acuity test), and those who were shown the Apple logo generated more creative ideas after the test than did those who were shown the IBM logo. In a second test, subjects exposed to the Disney logo acted more honestly than those who saw an E! Channel logo." Here's a preprint of the paper (PDF) due for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Experiment 1 is flawed.... (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't mention whether exps 2 and 3 were done on different days, but given that they did it for expt 1, they probably did for 2 and 3 too.
Re:To summarize then... (Score:5, Interesting)
The basic idea behind priming is that there is a large interconnected network of information and that activating one piece of information partially "boosts" other connected pieces of information. When you are prompted to act in new tasks, you have a higher likelihood to engage in actions that have this extra "boost" in activation.
Geek Priming Example:
In geek terminology, it's something like this. Suppose you were Google, and imagine you were designing a system to deliver targeted advertising to people. You had thousands of possible ads you could show someone, but you want the advertising to be more specific.
Lets say you were choosing between just two companies that want to sell advertising today. One of these companies is called "Joe's Fisheries", and they have a special on Sole (a kind of fish). One of these companies is called "Joe's Shoe Supply", and they've got a special on Sole Repair (the bottom of your shoes).
You might intercept an email about Soles, but you're not sure which sole it is. You don't want to be selling Fish to guys who need shoe repair, and you don't want to be selling Shoes to guys who want fish. On the other hand, other words in the email tell you if it's about shoes (like laces, or boots) and other words tell you if it's about fish (scales, salmon, whatever).
Whatever your way of deciding is, you probabilistically weight Fish over Shoe (or vice versa) depending on some other cues. Then you show the ad you think is most appropriate.
In a priming study, basically what they're doing is providing some bogus information to your same cortical networks that weight and categorize information. They're feeding you stimuli (like "scales", and "salmon"), and when they ask you to use the word Sole in a sentence, you say something like, "Gee, I could really go for a nice filet of sole", rather than "I hate it when gum sticks in the Sole of my shoe".
Mostly, these primes only affect the way you behave in either carefully constructed follow-up tasks, usually ones that require you to categorize or manipulate information. A classic example is something like Word Completion, for example:
"SOL_".
I'm sure you filled in "Sole" even though you could have put in "Solo" and "Sold", far more common words.
See! You can be primed too!
Apple Logo and Visual Acuity (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yaa! CreativIty can be measured now! (Score:3, Interesting)
I only skimmed the paper, and while I don't see signs of cheating, I still find the results suspect (the old "correlation is not causation" may apply here). Perhaps a statistician can chime in: how significant are these "statistically significant" numbers, as that term is used often in studies, and can be an effective smokescreen. Lies, damn lies, statistics, etc.
Then again, I could be wrong. I guess a study showing how some Americans are sheep isn't that hard to believe...
Re:Yaa! CreativIty can be measured now! (Score:3, Interesting)
MSFT needs help with that image. As most people think MSFT and get frustrated. When was the last time you enjoyed using windows? When was the last time you enjoyed using KDE/Gnome/Linux? Now when was the last time you enjoyed using your mac/ipod/iphone?
for me about 5 minutes ago as i was working a personal web site project and had 5 safari, two firefox, 3 finder, 5 text editor, 2 ftp app, and a terminal windows opened across two computers. expose, and a little extra app called clipboard sharing so i could copy/paste between the two. I was working and having fun. The process was painless. now to buy my first ipod/iphone as soon as they allow me to install apps that i want. Sure you can do all that in every OS,(with X windows you can even make them the same screen, tis a feature I miss in OS X) but how often do you enjoy it?
Re:Yaa! CreativIty can be measured now! (Score:4, Interesting)
"Perhaps a statistician can chime in"
Wether you personally accept the paper's conclusion or not is irrelevant. It does however conform to the scientific method and a Marketing Proffessor's 'peer' is likely to know a lot more about statistcs that you do ( judging from the questions in your post and the fact that my partner is a marketing prof.).
On the subject of measuring creativity they use the same sort of tests that are used to study chimpanze creativity...
From TFS: "Participants were subliminally exposed to images of either Apple or IBM brand logos and then completed a standard creativity measure, the "unusual uses test" (Guilford, Merrifield, and Wilson 1958). The unusual uses task allows for two tests of behavioral priming effects: First, the total number of uses generated serves as a measure of participants' motivation to be creative: If a goal to be creative is active, participants should generate a higher number of total uses. Importantly, these uses need not all be creative - just the sheer act of attempting to generate as many uses as possible is often used as a metric of creativity on this test (Eisenberger, Armeli, and Pretz 1998; Glover and Gary 1976) and is an excellent measure of the motivation to be creative. Second, the rated creativity of each use serves as an additional measure of creativity.
Re:Other logos (Score:3, Interesting)