Affective habituation: Subliminal exposure to extreme stimuli decreases their extremity.

Abstract

Following a functional perspective on evaluation, the authors hypothesized that subliminal exposure to extreme stimuli (e.g., extremely negative or positive words) would lead these stimuli to be perceived as less extreme. This process-affective habituation-was tested in 4 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were subliminally exposed to extremely positive and extremely negative words. In a subsequent explicit-judgment task, these words were rated as less extreme than extreme words that had not been presented. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated with an implicit evaluation measure. In Experiments 3 and 4, subliminal exposure to extreme positive and negative words made the words "behave" as words that are only moderately positive or negative. Several implications are discussed.The capacity to quickly classify perceived stimuli either as "positive" and "hospitable" or as "negative" and "threatening" is one of the most vital psychological abilities. In the past 25 years, many theorists and researchers have investigated the psychological processes underlying this ability (Bargh,

How does response bias emerge in lengthy sequential preference judgments?

“…Such response bias can become significant, especially in lengthy questionnaires, because each question may have an interrelation with the others, and lengthy questionnaires involve a high ''cognitive cost.'' These response biases have also been observed in preference judgments (Dijksterhuis and Smith 2002;Leventhal et al 2007). In a study by Leventhal et al (2007), participants were repeatedly exposed to pleasurable stimuli (pictures of people playing water sports), and were then asked to rate how pleasurable they found each stimulus using paper-based visual analog scales (VAS).…”

When Retailing and Las Vegas Meet: Probabilistic Free Price Promotions

“…They are $0.495 in condition 1, $0.494 in condition 2, and $0.495 in condition 3. 9 Given the work by Berlyne (e.g., Berlyne 1970, Berlyne andParham 1968), as well as Dijksterhuis and Smith (2002), it is reasonable to argue that our participants would experience affective adaption even without each decision actually being played out before the onset of the next trial. That is, for affective adaption to happen, it is not necessary for participants to experience winning or losing with the probabilistic free price promotion before they make the next decision.…”

“…Work by Berlyne (e.g., Berlyne 1970, Berlyne andParham 1968) suggests that novelty as an arousal-inducing stimulus and its hedonic value decrease in the face of prolonged repetition of exposure to the novel stimulus and its preference judgment. In fact, recent work by Dijksterhuis and Smith (2002) shows that affective adaptation even happens with subliminal exposure. Thus, although a probabilistic free price promotion may have been novel to participants at the beginning of the series of preference judgments, we would expect novelty and its resulting attraction to the probabilistic free price promotion to decline over the duration of the experiment as a result of affective adaptation.…”

A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem’s ESP claim

“…Bem observed this pattern for negative stimuli, but the opposite pattern, novelty preference, for positive stimuli. Bem claimed that this crossover was anticipated by the findings of Dijksterhuis and Smith (2002), who documented that participants habituate to emotional stimuli. Accordingly previously encountered negative stimuli are judged less negative and previously encountered positive stimuli are judged less positive.…”