December 28, 2010
Priming For Fun and Profit
I started re-reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink yesterday, and was struck again by the simple yet powerful concept of priming. In a nutshell, seemingly innocuous words and images in our environment influence our behavior in unexpectedly powerful ways. There was also a study done in the U.K. recently that revealed that being "observed" by a picture of eyes on a wall made people behave better.
This is pretty fascinating stuff since it destroys the assumption that we're conscious dominated creatures during our wakeful hours. What these studies seem to be hinting at is that we are mostly on autopilot when awake and the unconscious is still very much in control.
So with that in mind, I changed my desktop background to a picture of Phil Galfond playing poker. Step 1.
And I'm compiling a list of words to prime myself for thinking of solid (maybe even slightly nitty) poker. Right now I have: TIGHT, AGGRESSIVE, POSITION, VALUE, CALM, DELIBERATE, CHRIS FERGUSON, ALLEN CUNNINGHAM, DOYLE BRUNSON.
Priming works through the periphery, so I need to put these words somewhere so I'll see them only in passing. Possibly I can make printouts and scatter them throughout my room in "hidden" locations. Step 2.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit!
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