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Review
. 2020 Oct;9(5):644-650.
doi: 10.1002/pchj.364. Epub 2020 Aug 23.

Influence of subliminal stimuli on interpersonal trust: A possible mechanism

Jie Cai  1   2 , Jingyu Zhang  1   2 , Xianghong Sun  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Influence of subliminal stimuli on interpersonal trust: A possible mechanism

Jie Cai et al. Psych J. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate whether subliminal stimuli can influence interpersonal trust and to explore the mediating mechanisms. Participants were required to do a lexical decision task while the "trust" or "suspicion" Chinese words were embedded as the subliminal stimuli. Afterward, they played a trust game and reported person and situation perception. Results indicate that compared with exposure to "suspicion" subliminal stimuli, exposure to "trust" subliminal stimuli significantly improved interpersonal trust. Furthermore, person perception mediated the influence of subliminal stimuli on interpersonal trust, but situation perception did not. The results suggest that subliminal priming techniques can influence interpersonal trust, and such impact is mediated by person perception.

Keywords: interpersonal trust; person perception; situation perception; subliminal stimuli.

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