Higher order influences on evaluative priming: Processing styles moderate congruity effects

Abstract

A growing body of research challenges the automaticity of evaluative priming (EP). The present research adds to this literature by suggesting that EP is sensitive to processing styles. We relied on previous research showing that EP is determined by the extent to which the prime and the target events on a given trial are processed as a unified compound. Here, we further hypothesised that processing styles encouraging the inclusion of the prime to the target episode support congruity effects, whereas processing styles that enhance the exclusion of the prime from the target episode interrupt (or reverse) these effects. In Experiment 1, a preceding similarity search task produced a congruity effect, whereas a dissimilarity search task eliminated and (non-significantly) reversed this effect. In Experiments 2 and 3, we replicated and extended these findings using a global/local processing manipulation. Overall, these findings confirm that EP is flexible, open to top-down influences and strategic regulation.

The Effect of Exercise Intensity on Affective and Repetition Priming in Middle-Aged Adults

“…It seems that moderate-intensity exercise produces positive mood effects, indicating a greater priming in response to positive words. In contrast, high-intensity exercise produces a negative effect by inhibiting the evaluation of the target word [ 69 , 70 ].…”

When Does Contextual Positivity Influence Judgments of Familiarity? Investigating Moderators of the Positivity-Familiarity Effect

“…In contrast, studies that did not find a positivity-familiarity effect under similar task context conditions have used prime presentations that were considerably longer (e.g., Weil et al, 2017). 1 Consequently, another aim of the present research was to investigate the role of prime duration as a moderator of the positivity-familiarity effect.…”

“…The aim of Experiment 5 was two-fold: (1) to further explore the impact of prime duration on the positivity-familiarity effect using a within-participant manipulation; and (2) to shed further light on the influence of task context on the positivityfamiliarity effect, as investigated in Experiments 1 and 2. To this end, the task context manipulation in Experiment 5 combined the judgment-irrelevant condition from Experiment 1 (using numbers in the bogus subliminal presentation task and familiar/unfamiliar judgments in the AMP) with the judgment-relevant condition from Experiment 2 (using Chinese ideographs in the bogus subliminal presentation task and old/new judgments in the AMP).…”

“…For example, mere-exposure effects have been found to be limited to conditions of non-analytic processing and eliminated by analytic processing (Whittlesea & Price, 2001; see also Halberstadt, 2010;Halberstadt & Catty, 2008). Thus, to the extent that mere-exposure effects and positivity-familiarity effects are conceptually related phenomena that are driven by the same underlying processes, positivity-familiarity effects might similarly depend on non-analytic processing strategies (see Alexopoulos, Lemonnier, & Fiedler, 2017).…”