At the Boundaries of Misattribution

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) measures priming effects via affect misattribution.
• Concerns exist regarding intentional use of prime features in AMP judgments.
• The positivity-familiarity effect, where positive affect is misattributed to familiarity, offers a potential measure of unintentional processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To isolate unintentional processes in AMP by examining the positivity-familiarity effect.
• To determine if prime-valence influences target-familiarity judgments in AMP.
• To assess the role of intentionality by manipulating task context.

Main Methods:

• Seven experiments were conducted using the Affect Misattribution Procedure.
• Participants rated the familiarity of neutral targets following affective primes.
• Task context was varied to either encourage or discourage normative accuracy in familiarity judgments.

Main Results:

• Prime-valence significantly influenced judgments of target-familiarity within the AMP.
• This influence occurred specifically when the task context did not emphasize normative accuracy.
• The relationship between positivity-familiarity effects and self-reported prime use was inconsistent, yielding mixed results on intentionality.

Conclusions:

• Affective priming in AMP can influence familiarity judgments unintentionally.
• The effect is contingent on task context, suggesting a boundary condition for intentionality.
• Findings contribute to understanding misattribution effects and refining the AMP as a measure of implicit processes.