Significant Other Sequential Priming Paradigm
Background
The Significant Other Sequential Priming Paradigm (SOSPP) is an implicit social cognition task published by Vivian Zayas and Yuichi Shoda in 2015 to measure automatic, subconscious attitudes toward romantic partners or close loved ones.
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')).
At its core the SOSPP is an Affective Priming paradigm using partner-related primes (the name or face of their romantic partner) followed by positive or negative "target" words (e.g., happy, disgust, love, hate). The main task is to categorize the target words as 'positive' or 'negative' as fast as possible. The task records the participant's reaction time. Because our brains associate related concepts, participants will categorize positive targets much faster if the partner's face subconsciously triggers positive feelings. Zayas and Shoda utilized this paradigm and found that a partner's face can simultaneously trigger both positive and negative associations, a finding referred to as bivalent priming.
Task Procedure
The procedure starts out with collecting the name that the participant most associates with their partner or loved one. This name will be used as the 'significant other prime' (SOP) throughout the task. The basic procedure is introduced in a practice block of 16 trials that uses a neutral prime (e.g. 'glove') and a simple character string (e.g. 'NNN') as the prime stimuli, presented in random order. These prime words are presented for 200ms, and followed by a 100ms blank screen before the presentation of the target words (e.g. 'diamond') that need to be categorized as 'Bad' (press the E-key) or 'Good' (press the I-key). During practice, error response receive feedback for 200ms. Participants are further instructed to say out loud the first word they saw (this first word, the prime word, is referred to as the 'memory' word) after responding to the target word. This experimental manipulation ensures that participants attend to both words. The practice block is repeated if performance is below 80% correct or the average response time exceeds 1500ms.
The test phase consists of 2 blocks, each running 80 trials pairing the SOP with positive (20 trials) and negative (20 trials) target words as well as pairing a neutral control prime (e.g. 'table' or 'chair') with the same set of positive (20 trials) and negative (20 trials) target words. The script runs 10 unique positive and 10 unique negative target words, and each of the individual prime-target pairings is run twice per block. The trial order is determined randomly. Like the practice primes, the primes are presented for 200ms and replaced by a blank screen for 100ms before the target words appear. Again, participants are instructed to say the 'memory' word (aka the prime word) after each target response.
The script can be run to counterbalance the assignment of positive and negative response keys.
What it Measures
The Significant Other Sequential Priming Paradigm measures subconscious attitudes toward romantic partners
Psychological domains
- Implicit Cognition: Cognitive processes not under conscious control
Main Performance Metrics
- Difference in response time to negative and positive targets words following the partner prime: main priming metric
Psychiatric Conditions
The SOSPP is mainly applied to research in the context of attachment-related clinical sub-types such as attachment anxiety. Related paradigms using 'Affective Priming' have been used with the following patient groups:
- Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Depression & Mood Disorders
A sequential priming tasks that measures implicit attitudes towards one's significant other by Zayas & Shoda (2015).
References
Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Significant Other Sequential Priming Paradigm.
Fazio, R., Sanbonmatsu, D., Powell, M., & Kardes, F. (1986). On the automatic activation of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 229–238.
Zayas, V. & Shoda, Y. (2015). Love you? Hate you? Maybe it's both: Significant persons trigger bi-valent priming. Social Psychological and Personality Science.