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Priming is a memory effect whereby exposure to a certain stimulus changes the speed at which a certain memory is recalled or another stimulus is attended to or recognized. Priming works on an implicit level and is involved in a number of cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. A simple example is the familiar "red car" phenomenon where a person who buys a red car suddenly starts seeing red cars everywhere. The familiarity of the red car primes them to spot other red cars faster.
There are two broad types of priming: Positive and negative. Positive priming involves exposure to a stimulus that speeds up recall or response time, while negative priming slows it down. The most basic form of positive priming is repetition priming, which rather obviously involves the repetition of a stimulus causing recall or recognition of that stimulus to speed up.[1] Negative priming can involve the inhibition of selective attention or the stimulus being associated with being ignored in the past.[2] These priming effects are often modeled on Bayesian principles.