Outgroup faces hamper word recognition

Prepotent task-irrelevant semantic information is dampened by domain-specific control mechanisms during visual word recognition

“…For visual word recognition, we used a lexical decision task exploiting the taboo connotation of the stimuli to trigger a semantic interference. Compared to neutral stimuli, taboo (i.e., socially inappropriate) words have been repeatedly shown to slow down responses in visual lexical decision (Carretié et al, 2008;Geer & Bellard, 1996;Madan et al, 2017;Sulpizio et al, 2019;Sulpizio & Navarrete, 2020). This detrimental influence has been mostly related to the attentional-capture phenomena triggered by the salience of the taboo connotation (e.g., MacKay et al, 2004), which would divert resources away from the main task.…”