The Effect of Priming Student Identity on Iq-Test Score : Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial

This work evaluates whether by rendering more salient to students their own student-identity it is possible to increase their effort and performance in an IQ-test. The idea is based on the assumption that individuals’ behavior is often influenced by cues that work subconsciously and prime them to behave in certain ways. By implementing a randomized control trial on students of two universities in two European countries - namely the University of Essex (UK) and the University of Calabria (Italy) - we report that students primed with pictures and videos targeted to render their student-identity more salient obtain higher IQ-test scores than students exposed to neutral pictures/videos