Priming People for Different Paths

Priming People for Different Paths

Priming is a psychological phenomenon whereby exposure to a certain stimulus influences that person’s response to a similar or the same subsequent stimulus (Molden, 2014). An example of a priming example is as follows: an individual comes across a dog while out on a walk. The dog is not friendly, acts aggressively towards the person, and goes as far as chasing them around. However, the individual luckily gets away. The next time said individual comes across a dog or even another animal while out, their most likely response will be to run away in fear of being attacked. This influence of a stimulus on the subsequent stimulus is priming.

One way that we are priming certain groups of people for different paths is through injustice. People from well-off communities are treated fairly or sometimes not even held accountable for their mistakes. When it comes to minority and underprivileged populations, the situation is quite the opposite. Such people are discriminated against and not afforded the same opportunities as their counterparts would (Earnshaw et al., 2018). They are constantly exposed to violence, drug abuse, and crime from a young age, and they are primed or prepared for a life in the same direction.

One benefit of a college pipeline is that one is given opportunities to gain more knowledge and pursue one’s career with it. On the other hand, in 2015, Alice argued that this pipeline leaves a majority of students with a lot of debt in student loans (TED, 2015). While one could argue that a prison pipeline is useful in keeping crime rates down, it has numerous costs. One major cost is that the justice system is flawed, and many people end up being incarcerated unfairly, negatively impacting the rest of their lives.

References

Earnshaw, V. A., Rosenthal, L., Gilstad‐Hayden, K., Carroll‐Scott, A., Kershaw, T. S., Santilli, A., & Ickovics, J. R. (2018). Intersectional experiences of discrimination in a low‐resource urban community: An exploratory latent class analysis. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 28(2), 80-93.

Molden, D. C. (2014). Understanding priming effects in social psychology: An overview and integration. Social Cognition, 32(Supplement), 243-249.

TED (2015). Alice Goffman: How we’re priming some kids for college — and others for prison.

YouTube. Accessed from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

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Watch the following Ted Talk by Alice Goffman and answer the following questions:

How are we priming certain categories of people for different paths? What are the benefits and costs to creating “pipelines” to prison or college?

Briefly summarize your thoughts in a post. Your post should:

• give your definition of “priming”

• not be duplicative of another student’s cited experiment

• provide a reference list

• use your own words (i.e. no quotes and do not plagiarize)