ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on lawyers' use of carefully selected words and phrases as primes. These language choices are designed to direct the reader's interpretive process. Priming to influence interpretation is particularly useful when the information presented can be interpreted in different ways. Priming allows legal advocates to focus a decision maker's attention on a particular word or concept, as with the baseball at the yard sale. It also allows legal advocates to influence the interpretation of that information, as with the bugs in the apartment. In addition to influencing a decision maker's word associations and mindset, priming can also affect a decision maker's impressions, feelings, viewpoints, and value judgments. The impressions created by primes tend to be strong and lasting. Once people have an impression or belief, they are inclined to pay less attention to subsequent information, particularly information that contradicts the impression.
