Priming a sense of security: what goes through people’s minds?

Carnelley, Katherine and Rowe, Angela (2010) Priming a sense of security: what goes through people’s minds? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27 (2), 253-261. (doi:10.1177/0265407509360901).

Record type: Article

Abstract

There is a growing literature charting the positive personal
and interpersonal effects of security priming. Security primes
enhance self- and relationship views, and even evaluations
of outgroups, relative to control primes. We examine how
security priming is experienced by individuals and how its
effects differ from those produced by other positive affect and
relationship-related primes. We analyze the written protocols
produced by individuals in different priming conditions for
frequency of felt security, care, merging, agency, communion,
and nostalgia words. Security priming led to thoughts related
to felt security, positive care, a sense of merging with another,
positive emotion, and communion; furthermore, the effects
of security priming could be distinguished from the effects of
positive affect and other relationship-related primes. We discuss
several directions for future research.

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