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After reading this post I felt compelled to reply because I completely agree with this idea of priming. I never heard about the african american study and I found it pretty interesting how the checking of a box primes them with negative cultural stereotypes associated with acedemic acheivement. I had never thought about that before, but I fully agree that that could have an effect. If we think in the terms of the stereotype, why would we really then actany differently because in our minds, those ideas are what are present, so it seems logical that in turn, those ideas will indicate how we act, indicate how individuals act. If your mind is controlled by one type of thought, how is your mind ever suppose to expand and think differently. For example, if you are working on a problem and you have the wrong idea of how to solve it and someone told you about it but you keep working with this equation trying to solve it and dont open yourself up to another possible method to solve the problem, another idea, you will never be able to know the answer, and you will never be able to change, and you will forever follow those ideas even if you know that they are wrong, and not providing the right answer. If we think in terms of one way, that is how we act, unless we open ourselves up to other options of thought. In doing so, we don't get sucked into the trap of possibly thinking negatively, possibly abiding by the wrong idea, affected our results in the end. I find it very true what was said that if you go into a test thinking you do well versus going into a test with a negative attitude. That negativity will come through on the test, and you will do worse, at least from my personal experience. Then, once you do do badly, and confirm the negative thoughts, it almost becomes a cycle, because you think you can't do it, so you have more negative thoughts, and then you do badly again on the next test, and the negative thoughts that you are incapable of learning and executing the material become reinforced. If you think positively, and enter with a positive attitude, you will attract positivity. There is a movie called the secret which is all about the "law of attraction" and this notion of how you enter the world will indicate what you will achieve. You attract positive outcomes with positive thought and you attract negative outcomes with negative thought. It is important to think about everything in terms of the positive, even simple things which can mean the same thing when using either negative or positive termonology, you get the best results, the desirable results, you think and speak in positives. You do not put anything out into the universe that you do not want to happen, for if it is out there, the chance of it coming true is much higher than if it was never brought up and never thought about. So don't put negatives into the universe, don't think that you will do badly, try not to think about the cultural stereotypes that might affect you, try to be positive and put into the universe what you want to happen, not what you dont want to happen. For example, don't say I don't want to do badly, but instead say I want to do well. Essentially, the two statements are saying the same exact idea, but thinking in terms of positives yeilds positive results, so say the latter, say that you want to do well instead of that you dont want to do badly. It is all about controlling the mind and controlling what is put into the universe, and I do wonder what part of the brain might be involved with this processing? How do we really prime and train out brains to work this way, how to we train ourselves to react postiviely to the positives, how does this all work?