Previous stimuli influence users' decision.
<aside> ℹ️ Subtle visual or verbal suggestions help users recall specific information, influencing how they respond. Priming works by activating an association or representation in users short-term memory just before another stimulus or task is introduced.
</aside>
Exposure to a stimulus influences behavior in subsequent, possibly unrelated tasks. This is called priming; priming effects abound in usability and web design.
Priming is the process by which a given stimuli activate mental pathways, thereby enhancing the ability to process subsequent stimuli related to the priming stimuli in some way. The process results in a priming effect, which is the condition where access to a particular item of information in memory is enhanced as a result of recent exposure to a related stimulus.
For example, after having viewed a documentary on flight controlling in TV, the next day you may find yourself bringing up the "controller software engineering pattern" in a discussion with your colleagues at work. The documentary on flight controlling had primed you in that the memory traces of the concept of a "controlling activity" were highly accessible.
Also elements in the interface can prime user behavior and expectations.
For example, let’s assume users encounter a coupon field on the checkout page of an ecommerce website. Even though they may not have planned to use a coupon, the very presence of a coupon box primes users to leave the checkout flow and search for a promotion code — something we’ve seen again and again in our testing of ecommerce sites. FoMO (fear of missing out) is the cause of many a lost sale on sites with prominent coupon-code fields.
Why do some ideas prompt other ideas later on without our conscious awareness?
Priming and the science behind onboarding