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Social priming (the 'slow walking' study)
1996; failed 2012· Finding or experiment
Weak or failed to replicateFamous but not holding up in careful repeats.
The claim that reading words about old age made students walk more slowly, a landmark study that later failed to replicate.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
In 1996 John Bargh and colleagues at New York University had students unscramble sentences containing words linked to old age, such as 'Florida', 'wrinkle' and 'bingo'. Timed secretly with a stopwatch, they took about a second longer to walk down the hallway afterward than students given neutral words. Run twice with just 30 students each time, it became a textbook example of unnoticed cues steering behavior. Semantic priming, where 'doctor' speeds recognition of 'nurse', is different and well established.
Why it matters
It anchored a wave of 'behavioral priming' research and popular books. Its collapse became an emblem of the replication crisis and a warning about tiny, surprising studies.
The evidence
Status: weak or failed to replicate. A 2012 Belgian replication timing walkers with infrared sensors found no slowdown, except when experimenters expected one. Money priming and similar effects also failed in large multi-lab tests.
Open questions
Why so many labs once reported such effects: small samples and flexible analysis are the usual explanation, but Bargh maintains that hidden conditions matter.
Connections (3)
▸The replication crisis overturned Social priming (the 'slow walking' study)Well replicated
The connection
In 2012 a Belgian team repeated the slow-walking study with infrared timers and found no effect, except when experimenters expected slow walking. Daniel Kahneman then emailed priming researchers warning of a 'train wreck looming' and urging coordinated replications. Large Many Labs projects later failed to reproduce money priming, flag priming and similar effects.
Who showed it and when
Stéphane Doyen and colleagues in Brussels, published in PLOS ONE, 2012; Kahneman's open email, September 2012; Many Labs projects, 2014 and 2018.
The evidence
Failed replications used automated measurement and larger samples. Bargh disputed them vigorously, but no large preregistered study has confirmed the elderly-walking effect.
Open questions
Whether faint cues shift real-world behavior at all, or only by amounts too small for typical studies to detect.
▸Social priming (the 'slow walking' study) was a famous claim in Social cognition: how we judge peopleWeak or failed to replicate
The connection
John Bargh's research on 'automaticity', the idea that concepts activated outside awareness steer behavior, was central to social cognition in the 1990s and 2000s. The slow-walking study was cited thousands of times, alongside claims that thinking about professors raised trivia scores and that images of money made people less helpful. Their failures forced a field-wide reckoning.
Who showed it and when
Bargh, Mark Chen and Lara Burrows at New York University, 1996; Ap Dijksterhuis's 1998 'professor' study in the Netherlands; failed replications from 2012 onward.
How solid is it?
Citation records and textbooks show its prominence. Larger repeats failed, including a 2013 series of professor-priming experiments by David Shanks's team in London.
Open questions
Whether Bargh's broader automaticity framework survives; automatic processes are real, but their power over complex behavior is now in doubt.
▸Social priming (the 'slow walking' study) was cited as evidence for System 1 and System 2 (fast and slow thinking)Weak or failed to replicate
The connection
Kahneman's 2011 Thinking, Fast and Slow used social priming, including the slow-walking study and money priming, as vivid proof of System 1's hidden power, writing that 'disbelief is not an option.' When the studies failed, that illustration collapsed, though the broader fast–slow model rests on other evidence, such as reaction times and mental load.
Who showed it and when
Chapter 4 of Kahneman's book, 2011; Ulrich Schimmack and colleagues' 2017 blog analysis 'Reconstruction of a Train Wreck'; Kahneman's public reply acknowledging error, 2017.
How solid is it?
Kahneman wrote that he had 'placed too much faith in underpowered studies'; his comment is public record.
Open questions
Whether System 1's power over behavior was overstated generally or only in the priming chapter; other parts of the book, such as loss aversion, have held up better.