When I read about Priming in Daniel Kahneman’s famous book Thinking Fast and Slow I got nervous…

Priming is the idea that familiarity with an idea or concept will predispose us towards it. If something feels familiar (and this only needs to be familiar to our subconscious mind) it delivers ‘cognitive ease’. Our brain ‘likes’ it because it feels easier to take in than something unfamiliar.

Priming presents a real issue for researchers, particularly qualitative researchers because we are in danger of spending time ‘priming’ respondents in groups.

Ways round this. Well, I’ve always believed in keeping groups fresh and spontaneous – don’t spend ages talking about behaviour and then ask people about NPD concepts – that does seem like a mega-prime, but that’s probably insufficient.

I wonder too if we should use priming rather than try to avoid it? For example, ‘prime’ people to sit through a short film on supermarket shopping to get their associative juices flowing, or even prime people by looking through a full range of concepts, so they start to feel familiar with them before gathering their responses, associations, thoughts and feelings. At least that way they are primed to absorb it all – it will all feel familiar before a discussion ensues.

Is purposeful priming the answer? Or at least a good work-around? I’d love to know other ideas on how to deal with priming too…