Affective Priming Research Articles

Auditory aversion in absolute pitch possessors

Absolute pitch (AP) refers to the ability of identifying the pitch of a given tone without reliance on any reference pitch. The downside of possessing AP may be the experience of disturbance when exposed to out-of-tune tones. Here, we investigated this so-far unexplored phenomenon in AP, which we refer to as auditory aversion. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded in a sample of AP possessors and matched control musicians without AP while letting them perform a task underlying a so-called affective priming paradigm: Participants judged valenced pictures preceded by musical primes as quickly and accurately as possible. The primes were bimodal, presented as tones in combination with visual notations that either matched or mismatched the actually presented tone. Both samples performed better in judging unpleasant pictures over pleasant ones. In comparison with the control musicians, the AP possessors revealed a more profound discrepancy between the two valence conditions, and their EEG revealed later peaks at around 200 ms (P200) after prime onset. Their performance dropped when responding to pleasant pictures preceded by incongruent primes, especially when mistuned by one semitone. This interference was also reflected in an EEG deflection at around 400 ms (N400) after picture onset, preceding the behavior responses. These findings suggest that AP possessors process mistuned musical stimuli and pleasant pictures as affectively unrelated with each other, supporting an aversion towards out-of-tune tones in AP possessors. The longer prime-related P200 latencies exhibited by AP possessors suggest a delay in integrating musical stimuli, underlying an altered affinity towards pitch–label associations.

Manipulating Users’ Trust of Autonomous Products With Affective Priming

AbstractAutonomous products, which perform many functions on their own with limited user input, require users to exhibit trust at an appropriate level before use. Research in product trust has thus far focused on the product characteristics: such as manipulating the product’s design—for example, anthropomorphizing an autonomous vehicle—and measuring changes in the users’ trust. This study flips the usual approach and instead manipulates users’ mental state through priming, and then measures users’ trust to an existing autonomous product, the Amazon Echo. In this study, we used visual stimuli (images) that evoked either positive or negative emotions as affective primes to influence users’ trust before interacting with the Echo. While interacting with the Echo, users evaluated its performance and how well it met their expectations. Holistically, users’ perceived performance of the Echo and age had significant effects on their trust of the product, but the affective primes showed no significant effect. However, for the subgroup of participants whose expectations of the product's performance were met: those who received either positive or negative prime were more likely to trust the product than those who saw neutral images; men were more likely to trust the product than others. The study demonstrates the importance of meeting users’ expectations and highlights the potential to build trust by inducing emotions contextually.

The influence of affect and goal priming on decision search behavior

The interaction between goals and affect in decision making is not well understood. We test the affective-motivational route theory (AMR: Aarts et al. 2008b) which predicts that positive affect primed along with a goal leads to goal pursuit, whereas negative affect primed along with a goal does not lead to less goal pursuit. In the current study, we test AMR using a process tracing paradigm where individuals are primed with goals (accuracy or speed) and affect (positive or negative). Participants then performed a decision search task where decision relevant information must be actively searched. Results indicate participants primed with negative affect showed search behavior consistent with the primed goals of accuracy or speed. Conversely, participants primed with positive affect showed search behavior inconsistent with the primed goals of accuracy or speed. These results are in the opposite direction of AMR but are consistent with self-regulatory theories.

Do you feel like me or not? This is the question: manipulation of emotional imagery modulates affective priming

Mood congruity and affective priming have been used to study the effects of affective phenomena on perception. Manipulation of mood is appropriate for investigations of long-term effects while affective priming is limited to short intervals (approximately 300ms) between a prime and target. However, studying the influence of real-world rapidly changing emotional episodes on perception may fall between the cracks of these methods. This may be caused, inter alia, because emotional episodes are distinguished from mood experiences on one hand, but often last for longer than roughly 300ms on the other. Thus, it is unclear what experimental approach should be taken to investigate congruency effects triggered by emotional episodes. The present study used a new variation of the evaluation decision task (EDT) combined with a script-driven imagery procedure to investigate a possible congruency relationship between the evaluator's emotional experience at a given time and observable emotional markers of others. We used 180 9-word script-driven imageries as varying valence primes (negative, positive, neutral) and asked participants to imagine themselves in the situation described in the scripts. At the last stage of a trial, all participants were asked to evaluate the mood-positive or negative-of a target face of a child in a photograph. We manipulated the reading interval (4000ms and 1350ms) and the subsequent blank interval (300ms, 5000ms, and unlimited) until target onset. Prime and target valence were congruent or incongruent. Significant congruency effects were found for both short and long reading intervals and blank intervals. However, in longer blank intervals only the interference effect reached significance. Furthermore, the interference effect was found to be significant mainly in trials beginning with a negative script.

Predicting Interpersonal Outcomes From Information Processing Tasks Using Personally Relevant and Generic Stimuli: A Methodology Study.

Despite evidence of differential processing of personally relevant stimuli (PR), most studies investigating attentional biases in processing emotional content use generic stimuli. We sought to examine differences in the processing of PR, relative to generic, stimuli across information processing tasks and to validate their use in predicting concurrent interpersonal functioning. Fifty participants (25 female) viewed generic and PR (i.e., their intimate partner’s face) emotional stimuli during tasks assessing selective attention (using a modified version of the Spatial Cueing Task) and inhibition (using the Negative Affective Priming task) of emotional content. Ratings of relationship quality were also collected. Evidence of increased selective attention during controlled and greater avoidance during automatic stages of processing emerged when viewing PR, relative to generic, emotional faces. We also found greater inhibition of PR sad faces. Finally, male, but not female, participants who displayed greater difficulty disengaging from the sad face of their partner reported more conflict in their relationships. Taken together, findings from information processing studies using generic emotional stimuli may not be representative of how we process PR stimuli in naturalistic settings.

Association Between Dieting Failure and Unconscious Hedonic Responses to Food.

Dieting is a popular but difficult strategy for reducing weight. Previous studies have revealed several psychological characteristics associated with dieting failure. Here, the hypothesis that dieting failure is associated with unconscious hedonic responses to food was tested with a subliminal affective priming task. Food image primes or their scrambled mosaic primes were subliminally presented. Participants scored their liking of the subsequent target ideographs. The participants’ subjective dieting success was additionally assessed using questionnaires. Differences in liking scores of target ideographs between the food and mosaic conditions, as well as liking scores of target ideographs under the food condition by partialing-out other effects, were negatively associated with dieting success scores. These results suggest that dieting failure is associated with the strength of unconscious hedonic responses to food and that environmental controls to reduce food cues may be needed for dieting success.

Differential Neurobehavioral Effects of Cross-Modal Selective Priming on Phonetic and Emotional Prosodic Information in Late Second Language Learners.

Purpose Spoken language is inherently multimodal and multidimensional in natural settings, but very little is known about how second language (L2) learners undertake multilayered speech signals with both phonetic and affective cues. This study investigated how late L2 learners undertake parallel processing of linguistic and affective information in the speech signal at behavioral and neurophysiological levels. Method Behavioral and event-related potential measures were taken in a selective cross-modal priming paradigm to examine how late L2 learners (N = 24, M age = 25.54 years) assessed the congruency of phonetic (target vowel: /a/ or /i/) and emotional (target affect: happy or angry) information between the visual primes of facial pictures and the auditory targets of spoken syllables. Results Behavioral accuracy data showed a significant congruency effect in affective (but not phonetic) priming. Unlike a previous report on monolingual first language (L1) users, the L2 users showed no facilitation in reaction time for congruency detection in either selective priming task. The neurophysiological results revealed a robust N400 response that was stronger in the phonetic condition but without clear lateralization and that the N400 effect was weaker in late L2 listeners than in monolingual L1 listeners. Following the N400, late L2 learners showed a weaker late positive response than the monolingual L1 users, particularly in the left central to posterior electrode regions. Conclusions The results demonstrate distinct patterns of behavioral and neural processing of phonetic and affective information in L2 speech with reduced neural representations in both the N400 and the later processing stage, and they provide an impetus for further research on similarities and differences in L1 and L2 multisensory speech perception in bilingualism.

Modulation of startle and heart rate responses by fear of physical activity in patients with heart failure and in healthy adults

Fear of physical activity (FoPA) has been suggested as a barrier to physical activity in patients with heart failure and might be associated with low adherence to exercise regimen despite medical guideline recommendations. The present study examined physiological indicators of FoPA by assessing startle modulation (via EMG at the orbicularis oculi muscle) and heart rate responses (derived from ECG) after affective priming with lexical stimuli of positive, neutral, and negative valence, as well as words related to physical activity as potentially phobic cues. After screening for FoPA in patients with heart failure and healthy adults, twenty participants each were assigned to one of three subsamples: a healthy control group and two cardiac patient groups scoring either low or high on FoPA. The high-FoPA group showed startle potentiation and more pronounced heart rate acceleration (than did controls) in the phobic prime condition, indicating defensive response mobilization. Among the patients, higher FoPA accounted for 30% of the startle potentiation by phobic priming, whereas general anxiety, depression, and disease severity were no significant predictors of startle modulation. These findings suggest that FoPA in patients with heart failure is associated with defensive responses on a physiological level that might be indicative of avoidance behavior, thereby contributing to low adherence to exercise regimen. Thus, FoPA presents a significant target for psychological interventions to foster physical activity in cardiac patients.

The affective priming paradigm as an indirect measure of food attitudes and related choice behaviour

In this Registered Report, we assessed the utility of the affective priming paradigm (APP) as an indirect measure of food attitudes and related choice behaviour in two separate cohorts. Participants undertook a speeded evaluative categorization task in which target words were preceded by food primes that differed in terms of affective congruence with the target, explicit liking (most liked or least liked), and healthiness (healthy or unhealthy). Non-food priming effects were tested as a manipulation check, and the relationship between food priming effects and impulsive choice behaviour was also investigated using a binary food choice task. As predicted, priming effects were observed for both healthy and unhealthy foods, but there was no difference in the magnitude of these effects. This may suggest that the paradigm is most sensitive to affective, but not cognitive, components of attitudes (i.e., healthiness), but alternative theoretical explanations and implications of this finding are discussed. Food and non-food priming effects were observed in both reaction time (RT) and error rate (ER) data, but contrary to expectations, we found no association between food RT priming effects and choice behaviour. All findings from confirmatory analyses regarding RT and ER priming effects, and the absence of the expected correlations between priming effects and impulsive food choices, were successfully replicated in the online cohort of participants. Overall, this study confirms the robustness of the APP as an indirect measure of food liking and raises questions about its applied value for research of eating behaviours.

Attention please: ERP evidence for prime-target resource competition in the neutral-target variant of affective priming

Using event-related potentials we examined the mechanisms that underlie the influence of affective context information on evaluative judgments in affective priming (AP). Participants (N = 44) evaluated a priori neutral target ideographs that were preceded by 800-ms negative, neutral or positive prime pictures. We observed a significant AP effect (APE), with more positive target ratings for targets following positive versus negative primes, with neutral primes lying in between. A greater individual APE was associated with increased attention for the primes, indicated by larger amplitudes of parietal positive slow wave (PSW) and more pronounced prime affect discrimination mirrored in affect-specific variations of parieto-occipital prime P1 and parietal prime P2, P300, and PSW amplitudes. This confirms previous theoretical and empirical work suggesting that the size of the APE critically depends on the extent of prime-elicited affective activation. Furthermore, a greater individual APE was related to generally reduced depth of target processing as mirrored in smaller overall amplitudes of attention-sensitive target-related P1, P2, P300, and PSW. In addition, in the total sample P2, P300, and PSW were smaller for targets following AP eliciting, attention-capturing emotional, as compared to neutral primes. Based on the observed coincidence of increased processing of affective versus neutral primes, and specifically reduced processing of those targets that followed affective primes, we propose prime-target resource competition as an additional, not yet described process contributing to AP in the neutral-target paradigm.

Alexithymia and automatic processing of facial emotions: behavioral and neural findings

BackgroundAlexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, an externally oriented style of thinking, and a reduced inclination to imagination. Previous research has shown deficits in the recognition of emotional facial expressions in alexithymia and reductions of brain responsivity to emotional stimuli. Using an affective priming paradigm, we investigated automatic perception of facial emotions as a function of alexithymia at the behavioral and neural level. In addition to self-report scales, we applied an interview to assess alexithymic tendencies.ResultsDuring 3 T fMRI scanning, 49 healthy individuals judged valence of neutral faces preceded by briefly shown happy, angry, fearful, and neutral facial expressions. Alexithymia was assessed using the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) and the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA). As expected, only negative correlations were found between alexithymic features and affective priming. The global level of self-reported alexithymia (as assessed by the TAS-20 and the BVAQ) was found to be related to less affective priming owing to angry faces. At the facet level, difficulties identifying feelings, difficulties analyzing feelings, and impoverished fantasy (as measured by the BVAQ) were correlated with reduced affective priming due to angry faces. Difficulties identifying feelings (BVAQ) correlated also with reduced affective priming due to fearful faces and reduced imagination (TSIA) was related to decreased affective priming due to happy faces. There was only one significant correlation between alexithymia dimensions and automatic brain response to masked facial emotions: TAS-20 alexithymia correlated with heightened brain response to masked happy faces in superior and medial frontal areas.ConclusionsOur behavioral results provide evidence that alexithymic features are related in particular to less sensitivity for covert facial expressions of anger. The perceptual alterations could reflect impaired automatic recognition or integration of social anger signals into judgemental processes and might contribute to the problems in interpersonal relationships associated with alexithymia. Our findings suggest that self-report measures of alexithymia may have an advantage over interview-based tests as research tools in the field of emotion perception at least in samples of healthy individuals characterized by rather low levels of alexithymia.

Pupillary and Microsaccadic Responses to Cognitive Effort and Emotional Arousal During Complex Decision Making.

A large body of literature documents the sensitivity of pupil response to cognitive load (1)and emotional arousal (2). Recent empirical evidence also showed that microsaccade characteristics and dynamics can be modulated by mental fatigue and cognitive load (3). Very little is known about the sensitivity of microsaccadic characteristics to emotional arousal. The present paper demonstrates in a controlled experiment pupillary and microsaccadic responses to information processing during multi-attribute decision making under affective priming. Twenty-one psychology students were randomly assigned into three affective priming conditions (neutral, aversive, and erotic). Participants were tasked to make several discriminative decisions based on acquired cues. In line with the expectations, results showed microsaccadic rate inhibition and pupillary dilation depending on cognitive effort (number of acquired cues) prior to decision. These effects were moderated by affective priming. Aversivepriming strengthened pupillary and microsaccadic response to information processing effort.In general, results suggest that pupillary response is more biased by affective priming than microsaccadic rate. The results are discussed in the light of neuropsychological mechanisms of pupillary and microsaccadic behavior generation.

Priming social media and framing cause-related marketing to promote sustainable hotel choice

Hotels utilize cause-related marketing (CRM) to attract consumers by advertising green practices. However, CRM does not always result in the intended outcomes. In online settings, customer-generated cues transmitted through social media can influence responses to company-generated CRM. Two psychological processes can operate to influence the effect of online cues on decision processes: priming and framing. The current research used an online survey in which priming and framing were varied in a simulated hotel-booking scenario. Affective priming was activated using an Instagram post with positive or negative environmental content. CRM framing consisted of a hotel advertisement describing its sustainability practices as producing environmental benefit or preventing environmental harm. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that positive affective priming and positively framed CRM advertising produce a favorable hotel image, which in turn leads to higher booking intention. Moreover, pro-environmental attitudes magnify the effects of image on multiple outcomes, including booking intention, willingness-to-pay more, and word-of-mouth. The findings will help operators develop effective marketing strategies and leverage social media to promote their business while protecting the environment.

Subliminal affective priming changes the ‘feeling’ towards neutral objects in infancy

ABSTRACT In everyday life, our preferences are governed by influences that we are frequently not aware of. Studies investigating visual subliminal priming have shown that emotions are particularly able to modulate the affective judgments both at a behavioural and neural level. In this study, we investigated whether emotional unconscious learning is a core feature of human development, by testing infants as young as 3 months of age on a subliminal affective priming task, in which infants were primed with subliminal happy and angry faces (Experiment 1) or subliminal neutral and scrambled faces (Experiment 2), followed by two neutral objects. We found that arousal to the neutral objects – as indexed through skin conductance – changed when they were primed with faces displaying emotional valence, and particularly anger, but not when the face had a neutral expression. This change in physiological state only partially corresponded to a change in explicit behaviour – as indexed through looking times – suggesting that emotional unconscious learning likely influences explicit behaviour at later stages of development, when subcortical-to-cortical connections have strengthened.

Affective priming with musical chords is influenced by pitch numerosity

Previous studies using an affective priming paradigm have shown that valenced chords (e.g., consonant–positive; dissonant–negative) facilitate the evaluation of similarly valenced target words. The role of numerosity (the total number of pitches in a chord) and timbre has not yet been systematically investigated in previous priming studies using consonant/dissonant chords. An experiment was conducted in which 40 participants evaluated positive and negative target words with consonant/dissonant chords used as affective primes. Eight distinct chords (four consonant and four dissonant) were used as primes; the consonant and dissonant chords were equally divided to comprise either two (i.e., interval) or four (i.e., tetrad) pitches. Each chord was played with two distinct timbres (piano and harmonium), resulting in a total of 16 chords. Results showed that congruent chord–word pairings resulted in faster reaction times, and this finding was in line with previous research using consonant/dissonant chords as primes. However, this effect was present only with tetrad chords, suggesting that numerosity influences affective priming done with chords. There were no significant effects of timbre or the musical sophistication of the participants. Arguments are made as to why higher pitch numerosity in chords (resulting in acoustic complexity) might influence the evaluation of valenced target words.

The Role of Affect in the Development of Entrepreneurial Intentions

Abstract Advances on the study of entrepreneurial intention among students from universities motivate to further investigate the factors behind this intention. In this paper, we focus on the effect of affective traits (positive and negative) on the entrepreneurial intention antecedents proposed by Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior drawing on the arguments of affect priming. Using a sample of 597 students from Spain, we use structural equation model to test our hypotheses. Our results show that positive affective traits have a positive impact on the attitude toward entrepreneurship (ATE), perceived behavioral control of entrepreneurship (PBC), and social norms toward entrepreneurship (SN). Negative affective traits negatively influence ATE and SN, but not PBC. In addition, using a K-means clustering analysis and an analysis of variance, our study further explores how different affective personalities relate to a particular level of entrepreneurial intention. Our results contribute to understand of the psychological processes that influence entrepreneurial intention. Overall, our research contributes to the literature on affect and entrepreneurial cognition by evaluating the interaction of affect and the cognitive antecedents of entrepreneurial intention.

Beïnvloedt de NIX18-campagne impliciete en expliciete cognities van volwassenen?

Does the NIX18-campaign influence implicit and explicit cognitions in adults? Research has shown that often, the effectiveness of anti-alcohol mass media campaigns is not experimentally tested, meaning that it is unclear whether such campaigns are successful in altering alcohol-related cognitions. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated whether the Dutch NIX18-campaign is successful in influencing implicit associations (measured with an affective priming task) and explicit cognitions (i.e., alcohol outcome expectancies) concerning alcohol. Additionally, a possible relationship with negative evaluations of the campaign and psychological reactance was investigated. Participants implicit and explicit cognitions were measured before they were presented with either three NIX18-campaign movies or no movies (control condition). Subsequently, their implicit and explicit cognitions were measured again. Results show that whether participants watched the movies or not had no influence on implicit associations but increased alcohol outcome expectancies. No effect on evaluation and reactance was found. Possible theoretical and practical explanations are discussed.

Reward Modulates Affective Priming Effect in Cognitive Conflict Processing: Electrophysiological Evidence.

Previous research demonstrated that cognitive conflict could induce an affective priming effect, and the stage (detection/resolution) of conflict processing led to different directions (positive/negative) of the affective priming effect. We suggested that rewards play a critical role in the affective priming effect on conflict resolution. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs), using the arrow flanker task as primes and choosing specific affective words as targets to investigate the affective priming effect induced by cognitive conflict during the resolution stage. Our question was whether rewards created a modulating effect. Participants were asked to judge the congruency of the prime stimuli and then evaluate the valence of the target words. For behavioral results, the conflict effect was significant, and the reward promoted the behavioral performance of participants. For ERP results, enhanced N2 amplitudes for incongruent primes indicated a significant conflict effect. More importantly, as expected, in the rewarded condition, the enhanced N400 amplitudes for positive targets following incongruent primes were found, indicating a positive priming effect. However, in the unrewarded condition, the reduced N400 amplitudes for positive targets following incongruent primes were found, indicating conflict resolution hindered the processing of positive stimuli. These findings suggested that cognitive conflict-induced the positive priming effect during the resolution stage and that rewards had a moderating effect on the positive priming effect.

Olfactory priming on consumer categorization, recall, and choice

AbstractConsumer choices are mostly regulated by pleasurable experiences that arise outside of the individuals' awareness in response to sensory attributes. This research examines the unconscious mechanism underlying consumers' behavior in response to odors applying the priming approach. Five experiments show that individuals' responses to odors involve two mechanisms, one affective (affective priming) and one associative (semantic priming) that impact consumers' categorization, recall, and choice. We found that when individuals perceive an odor as pleasant, their memory for odor‐congruent brand logos (Experiment 1), and categorization of odor‐congruent visual objects (Experiment 2) is improved. Unpleasant odors, instead, improve the categorization of odor‐congruent visual objects only when they are made salient (Experiments 3 and 4). A pleasant odor diffused in the environment also drives consumers toward odor‐congruent choices (Experiment 5), providing evidence that the incidental exposure to odors may induce affective and semantic associations with unrelated objects and behaviors. We also demonstrate that olfactory cues might be more effective than other modality (visual) stimuli to drive consumer responses. An implication for marketing is that odors employed in retail settings not only may induce an experience of pleasure but also promote specific consumer responses, such as categorization, recall, and choice.

Poor inhibition of personally-relevant facial expressions of sadness and anger predicts an elevated cortisol response following awakening six months later

Failure to inhibit interference from distracting emotional stimuli may obstruct an individual's ability to regulate their behavioural and emotional responses to environmental stressors. Few studies have examined the longitudinal association between cognitive inhibition and regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) in the natural environment. Seventy-nine healthy adults underwent two assessments 6 months apart. Participants' ability to suppress interference from distracting emotional stimuli was assessed using a negative affective priming task that included both generic and personally-relevant (i.e., participants' intimate partners) facial expressions of emotion. Poorer inhibition of personally-relevant sad and angry faces, but not generic stimuli, significantly predicted an increased cortisol awakening response (CAR) six months later. Moreover, poor inhibition of personally-relevant sad faces mediated the relation between chronic stress and an elevated CAR. Difficulties inhibiting personally-relevant emotional information may represent a key mechanism in understanding how environmental stress influences HPA functioning.