Does the gun pull the trigger? Automatic priming effects of weapon pictures and weapon names

More than 30 years ago Berkowitz and LePage (1967) published the first stud y demonstrating that the mer e presence of a weapon increases aggressive be havior: These results have been replicated in several contexts by several r esearch teams. The standard explanation of this weapons effect on aggressiv e behavior involves priming, identification of a weapon is believed to auto matically increase the accessibility of aggression-related thoughts. Two ex periments using a word pronunciation task tested this hypothesis. Both expe riments consisted of multiple trials in which a prime stimulus (weapon or n onweapon) was followed by a target word (aggressive or nonaggressive) that was to be, ead as quickly as possible. The prime stimuli were,words in Expe riment 1 and pictures in Experiment 2. Both experiments showed that the mer e identification of a weapon primes aggression-related thoughts. A process model linking weapons as primes to aggressive behavior is discussed briefly .