TY - JOUR T1 - Behavioral Priming: It's All in the Mind, but Whose Mind? A1 - Doyen, Stéphane A1 - Klein, Olivier A1 - Pichon, Cora-Lise A1 - Cleeremans, Axel Y1 - 2012/01/18 N2 - The perspective that behavior is often driven by unconscious determinants has become widespread in social psychology. Bargh, Chen, and Burrows' (1996) famous study, in which participants unwittingly exposed to the stereotype of age walked slower when exiting the laboratory, was instrumental in defining this perspective. Here, we present two experiments aimed at replicating the original study. Despite the use of automated timing methods and a larger sample, our first experiment failed to show priming. Our second experiment was aimed at manipulating the beliefs of the experimenters: Half were led to think that participants would walk slower when primed congruently, and the other half was led to expect the opposite. Strikingly, we obtained a walking speed effect, but only when experimenters believed participants would indeed walk slower. This suggests that both priming and experimenters' expectations are instrumental in explaining the walking speed effect. Further, debriefing was suggestive of awareness of the primes. We conclude that unconscious behavioral priming is real, while real, involves mechanisms different from those typically assumed to cause the effect. JF - PLOS ONE JA - PLOS ONE VL - 7 IS - 1 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029081 SP - e29081 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029081 ER -