Using priming techniques to facilitate health behaviours

The present study used a priming technique to facilitate individuals' health behaviours in their everyday environment. Forty-eight young adults completed a “language proficiency task” which would either activate a healthy lifestyle schema in the experimental condition or a neutral schema in the control condition. Participants in the experimental condition were more likely than the control group to use stairs, instead of elevators, to move up one floor to attend another unrelated study. The results of this study suggested that the priming technique, an unconscious effortless process, was at least partially effective in facilitating individuals' health behaviours in their everyday environment.