I am such an artist! I totally misunderstood the word 'experimental' for about half this post, until it finally dawned on me you were talking about, you know, experiments. [/stupid] It makes much more sense now.

Kind of reminds me of the time a mathemetician tried to explain to me that all lines are curves, but not all curves are lines, and I, as an artist, said it was the other way around.

Before I stop wasting your time with this pointless comment, I just wanted to say that the Vrije Universiteit is in Amsterdam. Keep up the good work.

I wholeheartedly agree with your hesitation given the lack of trustworthy empirical methods. Priming and other implicit measures have opened up a whole new realm to social psychologists, but they are not without controversy. For example, some have made convincing arguments that they tap into cultural knowledge rather than an individual's unconscious beliefs. Regardless, I find it exciting that people are talking about things like XXP. Modern social psych often shies away from these kinds of topics just because they are very difficult to quantify. Unfortunately, avoiding them makes the field a lot less interesting!

You said it well, Daisy. The epistemological issues loom in a number of directions, but the topic itself is a good sign for keeping social psychology interesting! ;-)