The role of priming in anticipatory thinking

Abstract

Anticipatory thinking is the act of identifying problems that may arise in the future, and preparing for them in order to mitigate the risk of (or opportunity for) positive or negative impacts occurring. In this paper, we argue that a critical underlying process of anticipatory thinking is cognitive priming, where one's current thoughts influence the next without conscious intention. We make this argument in terms of two aspects of human cognition that are related to anticipatory thinking: context and creativity. We then use the parallels between context, creativity, and anticipatory thinking to support our belief that cognitive priming plays a key role in various aspects of anticipatory thinking. As part of this analysis, we also discuss its broader implications, including how it can be used to improve computational systems that do anticipatory thinking, as well as how it can be leveraged to improve anticipatory thinking in people.