Affective Priming In Evaluative Tasks

Affective priming is an active research field in recent 20 years. Researchers havedone a large number of experiments which were manipulated many differentprocedural variations, such as the present of priming materials and target materials,associative strength, SOA, tasks,etc. These researches have drawn some conclusions.They have proved that attitudes could be automatically activated, and explored thefactors which influenced affective priming, mechanisms mediating the affectivepriming effect, etc. But at present, researches on affective priming still have differentviews as well as many problems which need to be studied further. For example, doesaffective priming effect have cultural consistency? Which SOA condition will occuraffective priming effect? What are the mechanisms mediating the affective primingeffect? Besides priming materials were presented solely by vision or hearing, Willaffective priming effect occur when priming materials were presented by combinationof vision and hearing? So our study aimed at exploring whether affective primingeffect occurs when priming materials of Chinese words were presented bycombination of vision and hearing, its SOA characters and mechanisms.This study included two experiments. The first one was a 5(SOA:0ms,150ms,300ms,450ms,100ms)× 3(priming materials: positive, negative and neutral)×2(target words: positive, negative) within subjects design. We used Chinese words asexperimental materials, and present priming materials by vision, and selected 34sophomores randomly as subjects. The aim of this experiment was to explore ifaffective priming effect occurs when priming materials of Chinese words werepresented by vision, its SOA characters and mechanisms. The second one was a5(SOA:0ms,150ms,300ms,450ms,100ms)× 3(priming materials: positive, negativeand natural)× 2(target words: positive, negative) within subjects design. We useChinese words as experimental materials, and present priming materials bycombination of vision and hearing, and selected 34 sophomores randomly as subjects.The aim of this experiment was to explore if affective priming effect occurs whenpriming materials of Chinese words were presented by the combination of vision andhearing, its SOA characters and mechanisms. Data were analysised by SPSS11.0.Theresults were concluded as follows:1. Affective priming effect occurred when priming materials of Chinese wordswere presented by vision. It meant affective priming effect may has culturalconsistency.2. Affective priming effect occurred under relatively shorter SOA conditions(0ms, 150ms) in evaluative tasks when priming materials of Chinese words werepresented by vision. But Affective priming effect didn't occur under relatively longerSOA conditions (1000ms) in evaluative tasks when priming materials of Chinesewords were presented by vision. Affective priming effect faintly occurred under450ms SOA in evaluative tasks when priming materials of Chinese words werepresented by vision.3. The proportion of facilitation and inhibition in affective priming varied underdifferent SOA conditions when priming materials of Chinese words were presentedby vision. Congruence effect at 150ms was entirely based on facilitation for affectivecongruent trials, whereas facilitation for affective congruent trials seemed to haveplayed an important role in priming effect at 0ms besides inhibition for affectiveincongruent trials.4. Affective priming effect occurred when priming materials of Chinese wordswere presented by combination of vision and hearing.5. Affective priming effect occurred under relatively shorter SOA conditions(0ms, 150ms) in evaluative tasks when priming materials of Chinese words werepresented by combination of vision and hearing. But Affective priming effect didn'toccur under relatively longer SOA conditions (1000ms) in evaluative tasks whenpriming materials of Chinese words were presented by combination of vision andhearing. Affective priming effect faintly occurred under 300ms SOA in evaluativetasks when priming materials of Chinese words were presented by combination ofvision and hearing.6. The proportion of facilitation and inhibition in affective priming were sameunder different SOA conditions when priming materials of Chinese words werepresented by combination of vision and hearing. Congruence effect at 150ms isentirely based on facilitation for affective congruent trials, and facilitation foraffective congruent trials also seemed to have played an important role in primingeffect at 0ms.7 Time which subjects needed to judge target words was much shorter afterpositive prime than that after neutral and negative prime;Time which subjects neededto judge positive target words was much shorter than negative target words.