Automatic affective processing: Priming effects on the perception of affective valence in visual stimuli

Schumann, Griego, James, Kunkemöller, Kabisch, Kolomiyets, Kreitz, Liu, Mühl, Nagel & Neubauer

IntroductionEarly automatic affective processing:

• Has been suggested to affect stimulus evaluation in terms of positive and negative valence (e.g. Zajonc, 1980, 1984).

• Is thought to originate in evolutionary advantage. Especially negative affect allows detection of dangerous environmental stimuli with fast and automatic processing rather than time consuming conscious recollection.

• Is thought to shape behaviour and later cognitive processing. For example, automatic affect processing influence the ease of decision making by reducing cognitive demands (Blascovich et al., 1993; Fazio, Blascovich, & Driscoll, 1992).

Affective priming

• Is early in processing: automatic, found for SOA < 300ms, and disappeared for SOA above 450ms (DeHouwer and Eelen, 2001). Appears with subliminal presentation of primes (Hermans, Spruyt, DeHouwer, and Eelen, 2003). Brief SOA < 300 have been argued to be to short for conscious influence, which may need SOA > 500ms (Fazio et al., 1986).

• Is general: It was found for a broad variety of stimuli including words, nonsense words whose meanings had only previously been learned, line drawings, pictures and odours. It was also found with different kinds of response tasks, including evaluative valence categorization , traditional lexical decision, word identification, and pronunciation (for a review see Fazio, 2001)

Indirect measurement of affective priming

• measures reaction time latencies of target task

• is the common measure of effects in affective priming

Direct measurement of affective priming

• measure change in qualitative content of target task

• is used here to show influence of affective processing on conscious perception of valence

Lateralization:

• with lateralized presentation of primes we aim to evoke automatic affect processing separately in each hemisphere.

• inconsistent models of lateralization of emotional processing (for reviews see e.g. Canli, 1999; Davidson, 1995).

Right-hemisphere hypothesis: righthemisphere in general is more specialized for emotional processing than the left hemisphere.

First ‘valence hypothesis’, emotional processing is lateralized by valence. Larger involvement of the right hemisphere in positive emotion and larger involvement of the left hemisphere in negative emotion.

Second ‘valence hypothesis’ that supposes the opposite pattern of right hemisphere in negtive and left hemisphere in positive.

OverviewFirst, we demonstrate an influence of automatic affective processing of primes on the conscious perception of the emotional valence of neutral target photographs

Second, we study hemispheric asymmetries using lateralized presentation of primes.

Materials and Method

Results & Conclusion

References

Canli, T., Desmod, J., E., Zaho, Z., Glover, G., Gabrieli, J., D., E. (1998). Hemispheric asymmetry for emotional stimuli detected with fMRI, Neuroreport, 9, 3233-3239.

Davidson, R.J. (1995). Cerebral asymmetry, emotion, and affective style. In R.J. Davidson & K. Hugdahl (Eds.), Brain asymmetry (pp. 361-387). Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Fazio, R.H. (2001). On the automatic activation of associated evaluations: An overview Cogition and Emotion, 15 (2), 115-141.

Tootell, R.B.H., Mendola, J.D., Hadjikhani, N.K., Liu, A.K. & Dale, A.M. (1998). The representation of the ipsilateral visual field in human cerebral cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol.95, 818-824.

Zajonc, R.B. (1980). Feeling and thinking. Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175.

Zajonc, R.B. (1984). On the primacy of affect. American Psychologist, 39, 117–123.

Target ratings across hemispheres

0,09

0,50,55

0

0,1

0,2

0,3

0,4

0,5

0,6

negative primes neutral primes positive primes

TargetTarget (neutral or filler) and (neutral or filler) and Valence scaleValence scale

Fixation-PointFixation-Point

Left Visual Field Right Visual Field

500 ms

Left Visual Field

Prime leftPrime left

(pos, neg, neu)(pos, neg, neu)

250 ms

Prime rightPrime right

(pos, neg, neu)(pos, neg, neu)

Right Visual Field

250 ms

Self-timed

Stimuli : IAPS photos normed valence

• Primes: 3 * 15 neut., pos., neg. for each Hemifield

• Targets: 90% neut 5% each neg, pos fillers

Lateralized presentation:• primes outside visual angel of 2,5° (Tootell, Mendola, Hadjikhani, Liu and Dale, 1998). Randomized.

xx

2x2x

2,5°2,5°

Lateralization of neutral primes

0,62

0,38

00,10,20,30,40,50,60,7

neut_left neut_right

• Negative priming effect across hemispheres. Hence, automatic affective processing influences conscious evaluation of affective valence.• More negative ratings for neutral targets in right hemisphere. Indicates baseline difference in negative affect between hemispheres.

Design: Prime Type x HemifieldDV: Valence from Rather Unpleasant to Rather Pleasant

F(2,44) = 5.75; p = .006 t(45)=2.30; p =.025).

t(45)=3.10; p=.03