ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way that past experience can affect present behavior, in the form of priming effects on social behavior that have generated much interest and controversy. It explains that people tend to use accessible thoughts and feelings to solve problems afforded by the situations in which they find themselves. The chapter describes the Situated Inference Model of priming in which the authors have formalized these ideas. It examines that primes affect responses when this accessible content is mistakenly attributed to one's own internal thoughts and feelings about whatever is in the focus of attention. This chapter presents the Situated Inference Model as a framework to organize findings reported before model was developed. The model proposes that accessible content serves as a source of information in the decision-making process, various metacognitive factors. The chapter finally shows that the memory content made accessible by priming can have a variety of effects, depending on the kinds of attributions people make.
