The Priming Effect in Task Design Research.

This study, using a different operationalization from previous work, investigated the potential impact of the priming effect on task design research. The priming effect, as discussed by Salancik and Pfeffer 1977, 1978, is artificially increasing an attitudes saliency by including items describing that attitude on a questionnaire. Results of the study demonstrated a strong presence of priming effects. Further analyses of how the priming effect may manifest itself in common descriptive statistics means, correlations, reliabilities provided mixed findings. Additional keywords operations research methodology and simulation.