Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons^™

Procedural Priming Effects On Spontaneous Inference Formation, Kirmani Amma, Michelle P. Lee, Carolyn Yoon

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Procedural priming refers to how the frequent or recent use of certain cognitive procedures on one task can lead to a greater propensity to use the same procedures on a subsequent task. In this paper, we demonstrate how procedural priming may be used to assess spontaneous inference formation in situations where the inference involves a relationship or rule. We do so in the context of the advertising cost–product quality rule, i.e., that higher advertising expense implies higher product quality. Prior research suggests that underlying the advertising cost–quality rule is a basic human attribution (the effort investment rule) that says, if …