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Published on: April 12, 2018
The Role of the Valence, Arousing Properties and Subjective Significance of Subliminally Presented Words in Affective
Kamil Imbir1, Maciej Pastwa2, Magdalena Walkowiak2
1Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, 5/7 Stawki St., 00-183, Warsaw, Poland. kamil.imbir@uw.edu.pl.
Abstract:
In the verbal affective priming paradigm, the properties of a subliminally presented stimulus alter the interpretation of neutral target stimulus. In the experiment reported here, we tested the role of four factors (valence, origin, arousing properties and subjective significance) that determine the emotional reactions to words in affective priming. Subliminal masked presentation of words preceded the explicit task, which was assessment of neutral Quick Response code (QR code) stimuli. The QRs were codes for words representing personality traits. The results showed the effect of assimilation (negative words caused a negative interpretation, positive caused a positive interpretation) for words' emotional valence and no effects for origin. Concerning arousal, we found a weak negative trend. In the case of subjective significance, a moderate positive trend was found. These results suggest that affective priming effects are susceptible not only to the valence of priming stimuli but also to activation factors.
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