Experimental Design
The hypothesis is that a person can name an aggressive word more quickly if it is
preceded by a weapon word than if it word is preceded by a neutral word. Each subject
named both aggressive and non-agressive words following both weapon and non-weapon
"primes."
The design, therefore, was a 2 (prime type: weapon vs. nonweapon) x 2 (target type:
aggressive vs. nonagressive) within-subjects factorial design. Each subject was given
a total of 192 trials, 48 in each of the four prime type x target type combinations.
The means of the times in each of these four conditions were used as the dependent
variables. Therefore, each subject provided four scores to the analysis.
The subjects were undergraduate students ranging in age between 18 and 24 years.
They were told that the purpose of this study was to test reading ability of various
words. On each of the 192 trials, a computer presented a priming stimulus word (either
a weapon or non-weapon word) for 1.25 seconds, a blank screen for 0.5 seconds, and
then a target word (agressive or nonagressive word). The experimenter instructed
the subjects to read the first word to themselves and then to read the second word
out loud as quickly as they could. The computer recorded reaction times.