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On the Design of Subly: Instilling Behavior Change During Web Surfing Through Subliminal Priming

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Persuasive Technology: Development and Implementation of Personalized Technologies to Change Attitudes and Behaviors (PERSUASIVE 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10171))

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Abstract

With 50% of people spending over 6 h per day surfing the web, web browsers offer a promising platform for the delivery of behavior change interventions. One technique might be subliminal priming of behavioral concepts (e.g., walking). This paper presents Subly, an open-source plugin for Google’s Chrome browser that primes behavioral concepts through slight emphasis on words and phrases as people browse the Internet. Such priming interventions might be employed across several domains, such as breaking sedentary activity, promoting safe use of the Internet among minors, promoting civil discourse and breaking undesirable online habits such excessive use of social media. We present two studies with Subly: one that identifies the threshold of subliminal perception and one that demonstrates the efficacy of Subly in a picture-selection task. We conclude with opportunities and ethical considerations arising from the future use of Subly to achieve behavior change.

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Acknowledgement

ARDITI – Agência Regional para o Desenvolvimento e Tecnologia under the scope of the Project M1420-09-5369-000001 PhD Studentship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

    Ana Caraban, Vítor Teixeira & Pedro Campos

  2. Persuasive Technologies Lab, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus

    Evangelos Karapanos

  3. DUB Group, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

    Sean A. Munson

Authors
  1. Ana Caraban
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  2. Evangelos Karapanos
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  3. Vítor Teixeira
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  4. Sean A. Munson
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  5. Pedro Campos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana Caraban .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Peter W. de Vries

  2. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Harri Oinas-Kukkonen

  3. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Liseth Siemons

  4. University de Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Nienke Beerlage-de Jong

  5. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen

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Caraban, A., Karapanos, E., Teixeira, V., Munson, S.A., Campos, P. (2017). On the Design of Subly: Instilling Behavior Change During Web Surfing Through Subliminal Priming. In: de Vries, P., Oinas-Kukkonen, H., Siemons, L., Beerlage-de Jong, N., van Gemert-Pijnen, L. (eds) Persuasive Technology: Development and Implementation of Personalized Technologies to Change Attitudes and Behaviors. PERSUASIVE 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10171. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55134-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55134-0_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-55133-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-55134-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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