Kinsbourne’s selective activation model was evaluated in a sample of 31 strongly right-dominant males. Priming manipulations were hypothesized to preferentially activate a hemisphere and to improve performance on an affect-recognition task in the contralateral visual field. Subvocal rehearsal of neutral words was the left-hemisphere manipulation, while subvocal rehearsal of affective words was the right-hemisphere task. Baseline performance was evaluated via a control condition. Relative to the control condition, both manipulations interfered with performance of the right visual field and facilitated that of the left visual field. These findings implicate an overloading of left-hemisphere processing capacity, but a priming of the right hemisphere. Left-hemisphere representation of both affective and neutral words and the dynamic balance of activation between hemispheres is proposed to account for these findings. Furthermore, a right-hemisphere advantage was observed for happy faces but not for angry faces, across all conditions. Perceptual asymmetries are proposed to account for this finding, though interpretative caution is required due to its observation in a dual-task paradigm.