Question

Alice goes to see a rerun of Jaws (a movie about a vicious shark) a few days before she takes off to Florida on spring break. On break, she finds that she is now too nervous to spend much time actually in the water, since she is convinced that anything she sees in the water is a shark. Her heightened sensitivity is due to__________________.

Answer 1

Answer: priming

Explanation: Priming is a psychological phenomenon which affect one's response to a certain action or stimulus due to one's prior encounter or exposure to related events. It often occurs due to the mental correlation between two closely related events whereby response to subsequent events or stimulus is largely affected by the individual's response to the prior event. This occurs as the prior event is stored in memory and it is triggered when subsequent related events occurs.