John A. Bargh | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 9, 1955 Champaign, Illinois |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan (Ph.D., 1981) New York University |
| Known for | Perception-behavior link, goal-activation, unconscious processing |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Social psychology |
| Institutions | Yale University |
John A. Bargh (/ˈbɑːrdʒ/; born 1955) is a social psychologist currently working at Yale University, where he has formed the Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation (ACME) Laboratory. Bargh's work focuses on automaticity and unconscious processing as a method to better understand social behavior, as well as philosophical topics such as free will. Much of Bargh's work investigates whether behaviors thought to be under volitional control may result from automatic interpretations of and reactions to external stimuli, such as words.
Bargh is particularly famous for his research on priming and its effects on behavior. In one of his most well-known studies, Bargh and colleagues reported that participants who were exposed to words related to the elderly stereotype (e.g., "Florida", "Bingo") subsequently walked more slowly when exiting the laboratory, compared to participants who were exposed to neutral words.[1] This study has been highly influential, with over 5,000 citations. [2] Although some attempts to replicate Bargh's studies have failed to find significant effects,[3][4] a substantial body of research, including several large-scale meta-analyses, has since accumulated that supports the robustness of priming effects on behavior.[5][6][7][8] These meta-analyses, which collectively examine hundreds of studies with thousands of participants, indicate that while priming effects may be influenced by various factors such as the prime's specificity or context, the overall effect is reliable and significant. Bargh's research has played a pivotal role in our understanding of how subtle, even unconscious cues can influence our actions.