The Ideometer Effect

In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist john barge and his collaborators asked students at new york university to assemble four word sentences from a set of five words. 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. Reciprocal priming effects tend to produce a coherent reaction. If you were primed to think of oldage, you would tend to act old, and acting old would reinforce the thought of old age.