Upward Action Promotes Selective Attention to Negative Words

Abstract

Space-valence metaphor (e.g., bad is down) is embedded within cognitive and emotional processing (e.g., negative stimuli at a lower space capture visual attention more than those at upper space). Previous studies have revealed that motor action to vertical direction affects the emotional valence rating of stimuli with a valence corresponding to the metaphor, such as downward manual action that increases the negative rating of the stimuli. Previous studies also showed that motor action affects the valence rating only when introduced after the stimuli presentation. However, motor action before the stimuli presentation may affect visual selective attention. In the present study, we replicated the previous result; vertical or horizontal manual action introduced before the stimuli presentation does not affect the valence rating (Experiment 1). Moreover, we employed a modified version of the dot-probe task as a measure of visual selective attention to emotional stimuli (Experiment 2), where participants’ vertical or horizontal manual action triggered a pair of emotional words. Results revealed that an upward, not downward manual action promoted the selective attention to negative words, which was incongruent with the space-valence metaphorical correspondence. These results suggest that even though manual action does not affect the evaluative process of emotional stimuli prospectively, upward manual action introduced before stimuli presentation can promote visual attention to the subsequent negative stimuli in a way that is incongruent with the space-valence metaphor. Mechanisms underlying the metaphor incongruent effect and its directional anisotropy (i.e., no effect of downward action) have been discussed in the present study.