Recognising a victim in need: The effect of situational cues and priming on the identification of need for help

An experimental study investigated the joint influence of priming and situa tional cues on the perceived neediness of a target. A scrambled sentence te st was used to prime two groups with the concepts of neediness and safety. In a third group a neutral concept was activated. A free description of the target and a subsequent adjective rating were applied as dependent measure s. Although results indicated that both factors affected the attribution of neediness on a free description, the effects of priming were only apparent on this measurement and disappeared on the second task.