A time course analysis of the affective priming effect

Abstract

The argument that automatic processes are responsible for affective/evaluative\npriming effects has been primarily based on studies that have manipulated the\nstimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; i.e., the interval between the onset of the prime\nand the onset of the target). Moreover, these SOA studies provide an insight in the\ntime course of the activation processes underlying automatic affect/attitude activation.\nBased on a fine-grained manipulation of the SOA employing either the\nevaluative decision task (Experiment 1) and the pronunciation task (Experiment 2)\nwe concluded that affective priming, and hence automatic affect activation, is\nbased on fast-acting automatic processes. The results of Experiment 3 provide a\nvalid explanation for an apparent discrepancy between the results of Experiments 1\nand 2 and previous findings. Finally, the results of Experiment 3 support the\nprediction of Jarvis and Petty (1996) that affective priming effects should be\nstronger for participants who are more chronically engaged in conscious evaluations.