Affecting Priming Procedure

Background

In general, priming procedures are simple response-timed binary categorization tasks of items from two target categories (e.g. 'plants' vs. 'animals'). The general task consists of a briefly presented 'prime' stimulus (e.g. 'rose'), followed by a target stimulus (e.g. 'tulip'). Participants are asked to quickly categorize the target stimulus as a 'plant' or 'animal'. Priming Procedures are based on the observation that people respond faster if the target category (e.g. 'plants' for target stimulus 'tulip') was already 'mentally activated' by briefly presented 'primes' that are closely connected to the target category in one's mind (e.g. 'plant' (rose) = 'plant' (tulip) vs. 'plant' ('rose') ≠ 'animal' ('racoon')). Affective Priming contrasts emotional-related target categories such as "pleasant" vs. "unpleasant" and uses emotional-related primes to activate (aka 'prime') these respective emotions.

The Millisecond Affective Priming procedure implements a basic priming procedure using affective stimuli (e.g. positive and negative adjectives) as primes and targets and asks participants to categorize the presented targets as 'pleasant' vs. 'unpleasant' as a simple demonstration of the affective priming effect. In this scenario, participants are expected to respond significantly faster evaluating targets following emotion-congruent primes (such as 'lovely' -> 'ice-cream') than evaluating targets following emotion-incongruent primes (such as 'lovely' -> 'war'). The presentation duration of the primes is by default consciously processable ('supraliminal') as opposed to primes presented at subliminal speeds (below conscious processing threshold).

Affective Priming can be used to study study (unconscious) biases towards the priming categories. For example, the Evaluative Priming Procedure uses latency-based facilitation scores of prime stimuli to make inferences about people's biases. Similarly, the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) leverages 'emotion transference' from primes to target stimuli and analyzes people's 'pleasant' ratings of neutral items after being primed by different categories. However, while classic Affective Priming procedures focus on latency-based measures, the AMP focuses on the change in the number of pleasant ratings and therefore does not require fast motor responses.

Task Procedure

The procedure starts out with a baseline block of 48 trials during which a string of three stars acts as an emotional-neutral prime. The targets (24 negative words such as 'cancer' and 24 positive words such as 'rainbow') are selected at random. Each prime is presented for 200ms and followed by a blank screen for an 100ms inter-stimulus interval before the target words are presented. Participants are asked to respond as fast as possible to categorize the target word as 'pleasant' (press the I-key) or 'unpleasant' (press the E-key). After responding, the next prime appears after a 2500ms intertrial interval. The test block functions very similarly, but instead of the baseline prime, it presents the 24 negative and positive words as primes (ensuring that the same word is not selected as prime and target). around the selected screen location. The test is over if the allotted time is up, or if participants submit their responses via the Submit button.

What it Measures

The Affective Priming Procedure measures the impact of implicit emotion-activation

Psychological domains

• Implicit Cognition: Cognitive Processes not under conscious control

Main Performance Metrics

• Average (Correct) Response Times to Baseline Pairings: response speed to baseline pairings (no emotion activation -> response neutral)
• Average (Correct) Response Times to Congruent Pairings: response speed to congruent pairings (congruent emotion activation -> expected response boost)
• Average (Correct) Response Times to Incongruent Pairings: response speed to incongruent pairings (incongruent emotion activation -> expected response obstacle)

Psychiatric Conditions

This implementation of an Affective Priming Procedure is research-relevant only. Procedures such as the AMP are used with clinical populations such as Eating Disorder patients.

Test Variations

References

Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Affecting Priming Procedure.

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Hermans, D., Houwer, J., & Eelen, P. (1994). The affective priming effect: Automatic activation of evaluative information in memory. Cognition & Emotion, 8(6), 515-533.

Klauer, K. (1997). Affective Priming. European Review of Social Psychology, 8(1), 67-103.

Houwer, Hermans, Rothermund, & Wentura. (2002). Affective priming of semantic categorisation responses. Cognition & Emotion, 16(5), 643-666.

Robinson, Michael D., Ode, Scott, Moeller, Sara K., & Goetz, Paul W. (2007). Neuroticism and affective priming: Evidence for a neuroticism-linked negative schema.(Author abstract). Personality and Individual Differences, 42(7), 1221.

Donges, U., Kersting, A., Suslow, T., & Zalla, T. (2012). Women's Greater Ability to Perceive Happy Facial Emotion Automatically: Gender Differences in Affective Priming (Gender Differences in Affective Priming). PLoS ONE, 7(7), E41745.

Yang, J., Cao, Z., Xu, X., & Chen, G. (2012). The Amygdala Is Involved in Affective Priming Effect for Fearful Faces. Brain and Cognition, 80(1), 15-22.