| Semantic priming effects are thought to occur as the result of spreading activation from a prime to a semantically related target. Similarly, network models of emotion (Bower, 1981) predict affective priming effects, which are thought to occur as the result of spreading activation from an affective prime to an affectively related target. In a series of 4 experiments, no support for affective priming was found. Experiments 1 and 2 showed strong evidence for the role of attentional mechanisms in an affective priming paradigm. Using a lexical decision task, results showed that negative primes were associated with slower response latencies compared to neutral primes, and that negative targets were associated with faster response latencies compared to neutral targets. These results are interpreted as reflecting the attention grabbing power of negative stimuli, rather than the spread of activation between affectively related stimuli. Experiment 3 showed semantic priming effects for affective words, but showed no evidence for priming based on affective similarity. The results of Experiment 4 indicated that the priming of an evaluative response occurs independent of semantic priming, and is not due to the spread of activation from an affective prime to an affective target. Implications for emotion network models and for research on affective information processing are discussed. |
