Affective priming caused by musical chords on human facial expressions

Abstract

The emotional valence of a given stimulus is more quickly identified when such stimulus is preceded by another stimulus with a congruent valence (e.g., a positive word preceded by another positive word), a phenomenon termed affective priming. The present study investigated whether affective priming occurs when chords (consonant/dissonant, high/low pitch) are used as primes, and faces (happy or sad) are used as targets. Forty undergraduate students were submitted to 64 trials divided in eight experimental conditions with eight trials each. The eight experimental conditions were half congruent and half incongruent. The congruent combinations consisted of (a) consonant/high pitch—happy, (b) consonant/low pitch—happy, (c) dissonant/high pitch—sad, and (d) dissonant/low pitch—sad, while the incongruent combinations consisted of (e) dissonant/high pitch—happy, (f) dissonant/low pitch—happy, (g) consonant/high pitch—sad, and (h) consonant/low pitch—sad. Faster responses were found in the congruent condition when compared with the incongruent one, except when the high pitch—happy face combination was presented. These results partially replicate previous findings suggesting that the salience of the target stimuli can hinder the affective priming effect, which seems consistent with the happiness superiority effect literature.