How priming got me into (just a bit of) trouble.  When given the
right ammunition, the mind is like a gun that fires with no
warning. Sometimes the gun goes off and no one gets hurt. Other
times (and in a recent case of my own) we end up looking like a
dingleberry in front of an audience of people.  Remember this,
by the way?  [Viewer Discretion Advised: Gun-safety ‘expert’
shoots self in leg, followed by nonchalant attempt at continuing
discussion.]  Anyways, I did not shoot myself with a gun, but my
psychological weaponry did misfire the other day, landing me in
a slightly sticky situation. Before I get into the details,
allow me to introduce the classic psychological phenomenon known
as priming.  According to Wikipedia, priming is “an implicit
memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a
response to a later stimulus” (2013). Put differently, a
subconscious link between two things is forged, thereby making
retrieval of a second memory ready to fire as soon as the brain
is loaded with the first