Priming for Persuasion

One of the most powerful tools in an advocate’s toolbox is the psychological concept of priming.  Priming “occurs when an individual’s exposure to a certain stimulus influences their response to a subsequent prompt, without any awareness of the connection.”[i]  In other words, “[p]riming plants a seed in the brain [that] . . . causes us to form an impression that we then use to interpret new information.”[ii]

For example, in one famous research study, participants were exposed to a list of words associated with either adventurousness or recklessness.[iii]  The participants were then provided with a story involving a protagonist whose behavior was ambiguous with respect to those traits.[iv]  When later asked to characterize the protagonist’s behavior, participants were more likely to characterize the behavior consistent with the traits reflected in the words they were exposed to before reading the story.[v]

The concept of priming involves the inner workings of long-term memory.[vi]  Our long-term memory creates units known as “schemas,” which allow us more efficient access to memories by activating them through associated sights, smells, and sounds.[vii] “Priming suggests that certain schemas are activated in unison, which leads to related or connected units of information being activated at the same time.”[viii]

There are many kinds of priming[ix] that are relevant in legal writing, and among them are the following:

• Semantic priming—the association of words in a logical or linguistic way[x]
• Repetition priming—the repeated pairing of stimulus and response[xi]
• Perceptual priming—the perception of similarity between two things that may not, in fact, be similar[xii]

For semantic priming, think about rhetorical devices, such as parallelism, alliteration, anaphora, epistrophe, or metaphor to name a few.[xiii]  A famous example is Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

For repetition priming, there’s no better public example than Donald Trump’s approach to Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.  Over the course of more than two years, when tweeting about the investigation, Trump used the phrase “witch hunt” more than 160 times.[xiv]  A survey conducted around the same time revealed that, while roughly 60% of adults wanted the investigation, half had “‘just some’ or no confidence that a final report . . . would be ‘fair and even-handed.’”[xv]  Additionally, despite the majority support for investigation, 46% of respondents nevertheless believed it would go “too far,” and support for impeachment fell throughout the same time period.[xvi]

For perceptual priming, consider the recent cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, wherein the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of laws in both Texas and Florida designed to regulate how social media companies control content posted on their sites.[xvii]  The states argued that social media platforms are common carriers who may not arbitrarily discriminate against users’ speech,[xviii] while the social media companies argued that social media platforms are “traditional media” requiring “editorial discretion over the expression they disseminate.”[xix]  Though social media is truly neither of those things, the parties sought to have the Court perceive social media to be like the one more favorable to their respective positions.[xx]

Priming is persuasive because the connection is made subconsciously by the reader, and readers tend to trust their own conclusions above others.[xxi]  This is sometimes referred to as “‘the ownness bias’ or the tendency of ‘audience members to consider their own thoughts to be stronger than message arguments.’”[xxii]

Here’s where you can use it in your writing:

• Issue framing. Consider the abortion context; the issue could be framed as either protecting individual reproductive autonomy or protecting the rights of unborn persons.  By framing the issue favorably to your position at the outset, you are priming your audience to view the case through your chosen lens.
• Factual opening. Imagine a case involving student speech that led to some kind of disruption at school.  The competing values are a student’s First Amendment right to free speech and the school’s compelling interest in a safe and orderly learning environment.  If you represent the student, you want to open your facts section with a focus on the student and value of the speech the student made, thereby priming your audience to also value both the individual and the speech.  On the other hand, if you represent the school, you want to open with the facts underlying the disruption, priming your reader to see chaos and a justifiable need for school intervention.
• Argument headings. State your argument headings assertively as the conclusions you want your audience to draw. For example, “Trial counsel’s decision to reject the alibi defense was a matter of reasonable trial strategy”; or “The state presented sufficient evidence of the defendant’s deliberation.” The headings prime your reader to view the analysis and legal authority as consistent with those conclusions.
• Rule statements. When stating the applicable rules, begin with your position as the default outcome.  For example, when advocating in favor of summary judgment, establish granting the motion as the default position: “Summary judgment shall be granted when there are no genuine issues of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”  Or, when advocating against the entry of summary judgment, establish denial as the default position:  “Summary judgment should be denied unless the moving party establishes that there are no genuine issues of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”  Stating the rule with your preferred outcome as the default primes your audience to see your opponent’s position as the exception and yours as the rule.
• Quotation introductions. Before offering the reader quoted language from either a legal authority, a written document, or witness testimony, prime the reader by summarizing what you want them to understand from the language.  For example,

At the evidentiary hearing, trial counsel testified that she strategically chose not to call the alibi witness because his testimony was inconsistent with the chosen justification defense:  “From the beginning, [the defendant] told me he acted in self-defense, and I think the jury would have been confused if we put his brother on the stand to say he was at a party across town the whole time.”

This kind of priming helps focus the reader’s understanding of potentially ambiguous quoted language favorably to your position and align it with your legal authority.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and priming can be used in each of these areas on both large and small structural scales, from general organization down to sentence structure and word choice.  Priming is an exceptionally powerful persuasive tool.  Both using it and recognizing it can make you a more effective advocate.

[i] The Decision Lab, Why do some ideas prompt other ideas later on without our conscious awareness?, available at: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/priming (last visited May 13, 2024).

[ii] Kathryn M. Stanchi, The Power of Priming in Legal Advocacy: Using the Science of First Impressions to Persuade the Reader, 89 Or. L. Rev. 305, 307 (2010).

[iii] Barbara O’Brien & Daphna Oyserman, It’s Not Just What You Think, but Also How You Think About It: The Effect of Situationally Primed Mindsets on Legal Judgments and Decision Making, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 149, 152 (2008).

[iv] Id.

[v] Id.

[vi] The Decision Lab, supra, note i.

[vii] Id.

[viii] Id.

[ix] Id.

[x] Id.

[xi] Id.

[xii] Dave Cornell, 15 Priming Examples (in Psychology) (Jan. 3, 2024), available at: https://helpfulprofessor.com/priming-examples-psychology/ (last visited May 13, 2024).  This site also contains information about additional forms of priming, such as associative priming, cultural priming, affective priming, and more.

[xiii] For definitions of these terms and other common rhetorical devices, see https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/rhetorical-devices-list-examples (last visited May 13, 2024).

[xiv] Madison Pauly, Are Trump’s Attacks on Mueller Working? (Jan. 27, 2019), available at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/are-trumps-attacks-on-mueller-working/ (last visited on May 13, 2024).

[xv] Id.

[xvi] Id.

[xvii] Amy Howe, Social Media Content Moderation Laws Come Before the Supreme Court (Feb. 23, 2024), available at:  https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/social-media-content-moderation-laws-come-before-supreme-court/ (last visited May 13, 2024).

[xviii] Brief of Petitioners, Moody v. NetChoice, available at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-277/291860/20231130111448519_2023-11-30%20Final%20NetChoice%20merits%20brief.pdf (last visited May 13, 2024).

[xix] Brief of Respondents, Moody v. NetChoice, available at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-277/291860/20231130111448519_2023-11-30%20Final%20NetChoice%20merits%20brief.pdf (last visited May 13, 2024).

[xx] Howe, supra, note xvii.

[xxi] See Michael J. Higdon, Something Judicious This Way Comes . . . the Use of Foreshadowing As A Persuasive Device in Judicial Narrative, 44 U. Rich. L. Rev. 1213, 1225 (2010) (“studies show that when processing messages readers are more persuaded by conclusions that are implicit rather than explicit, especially when the reader is more involved in the communication”).

[xxii] Id.