![]() For example, subliminally presented smiling and scowling faces positively and negatively shift evaluative judgments of subsequently presented, affectively neutral Chinese ideographs ( Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). Presumably, the affect from a subliminal stimulus is diffuse in the sense that it can spill over onto a temporally adjacent stimulus. This subliminal assimilation is particularly effective with emotional stimuli such as facial expressions. Investigations of unconscious processing often include procedures that allow experimenters to assess the degree to which aspects of an unseen prime stimulus are incorporated into a judgment regarding a consciously perceived target stimulus ( Higgins, 1996). ![]() The goal of the present investigation was thus to determine if unconscious emotional processing has long-lasting effects in addition to previously described short-term effects. In particular, if affective priming remains operative for many hours, such influences on people’s preferences and social behavior may be much more pervasive than commonly assumed. Given the immense amount of information in typical environments that people process without awareness, it is critical to understand the extent to which such processing influences conscious experience and behavior. Demonstrations that subliminal processing of sensory input can influence how we immediately evaluate consciously perceived stimuli (e.g., Higgins, 1996 Li, Zinbarg, Boehm, & Paller, 2008 Murphy & Zajonc, 1993 Stapel, Koomen, & Ruys, 2002) are particularly intriguing because such findings highlight the remarkable extent to which human behavior is not necessarily in agreement with subjective intentions and experiences. The influence of affective information on behavior is notable because it can sometimes occur without conscious awareness of the affective input (e.g., Zajonc, 1980, 1984 Whalen, Rauch, Etcoff, McInerney, Lee, & Jenike, 1998b). We conclude that behavioral biases induced by masked emotional expressions are not ephemeral, but rather can last at least 24 hours. These results converge with findings showing memory advantages with happy expressions, though here the expressions were displayed on the face of a different person, perceived subliminally, and not present at test. Participants likely to have processed primes supraliminally did not respond differentially as a function of expression. Surprise faces subliminally primed by happy faces were initially rated as more positive, and were later remembered better, than those primed by fearful or neutral faces. Is this subliminal affective priming merely a transient phenomenon manifested in fleeting perceptual changes, or are long-lasting effects also induced? To address this question, we investigated memory for surprise faces 24 hours after they had been shown with 30-ms fearful, happy, or neutral faces. Unconscious processing of stimuli with emotional content can bias affective judgments.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |