Use of affective priming to measure the implicit self-reference effect

A modified suboptimal affective priming paradigm was used to provide an implicit measure of the self-reference effect (Implicit Self-Reference effect, ISR). Hexagrams described to participants as "symbols of different human characteristics" served as judgment target stimuli. Participants (14 women, 12 men; age range = 21 to 25 years) were asked to judge the extent to which the characteristic symbolized by each hexagram was self-relevant to them. Twelve photographs of faces displaying either a neutral expression, disgust, or joy were used as suboptimal primes for each presentation and exposed for 17 msec. Results indicated that participants judged hexagrams affectively primed with faces showing disgust as having significantly lower reference to the self than hexagrams primed with joyful faces.