Premium
Influence of subliminal stimuli on interpersonal trust: A possible mechanism
Author(s) -
Cai Jie,
Zhang Jingyu,
Sun Xianghong
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
psych journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 2046-0260
pISSN - 2046-0252
DOI - 10.1002/pchj.364
Subject(s) - subliminal stimuli , psychology , interpersonal communication , perception , priming (agriculture) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , botany , germination , biology
Abstract The present study aims to investigate whether subliminal stimuli can influence interpersonal trust and to explore the mediating mechanisms. Participants were required to do a lexical decision task while the “trust” or “suspicion” Chinese words were embedded as the subliminal stimuli. Afterward, they played a trust game and reported person and situation perception. Results indicate that compared with exposure to “suspicion” subliminal stimuli, exposure to “trust” subliminal stimuli significantly improved interpersonal trust. Furthermore, person perception mediated the influence of subliminal stimuli on interpersonal trust, but situation perception did not. The results suggest that subliminal priming techniques can influence interpersonal trust, and such impact is mediated by person perception.