Priming
How recent experiences bias what comes next
Your brain is constantly being shaped by what it was just exposed to, even when you don't realize it. Priming happens when encountering one stimulus influences how you respond to the next. See the word "yellow," and you'll recognize "banana" milliseconds faster. Hear someone described as warm, and you'll interpret their later behavior more charitably.
Priming is mostly invisible from the inside. It's the reason a soundtrack can shift your read of a scene, a single word in a question can shape your answer, or the layout of a grocery store nudges what ends up in your cart. Marketers, lawyers, and political operatives have understood this for a long time. The defensive move isn't to resist priming, you can't, but to notice when your reaction to something seems disproportionate to its content.
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Priming