The impact of awareness on affective emoji priming in visual word recognition

Emojis have become integral to digital communication, yet their impact on downstream cognitive processing is not fully understood. In two lexical decision experiments, we examined the behavioral and electrophysiological effects of emoji primes that varied by emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative) and face-status (face vs. non-face). Experiment 1, where clearly visible primes were presented for 100 ms, revealed a positivity advantage, with positive emojis facilitating responses and modulating both early (P1) and late (LPP) ERP components, along with a response-locked positivity indicating enhanced motor preparation. Negative emojis elicited early (P1, P2) ERP modulations but did not significantly alter behavior. Face emojis also increased early perceptual components (P1, P2/P3a), suggesting that face-like properties capture attention automatically. Experiment 2 employed continuous flash suppression (CFS) to limit conscious prime perception. Under these conditions, positive emojis no longer facilitated responses, and face-status effects disappeared. Negative emojis, however, showed robust early negativities in the ERPs and a trend toward slower response times, consistent with the automatic vigilance account. Overall, the findings indicate that conscious perception is crucial for the positivity advantage of emojis to manifest, whereas negative stimuli can still engage early neural processes and inhibit performance under limited conscious processing.