Gender differences in the negative affective priming of aggressive behavior.

The negative affective priming of aggression was examined across different aversive contexts (general stress exposure and frustration) with a laboratory aggression paradigm that measured the intensity of shocks participants delivered to a putative employee. Participants' emotional responses were gauged via startle eyeblink reactions and self-report mood ratings. Aside from gender differences in overall aggression, men but not women exposed to general stress showed significant increases in aggression across blocks. However, frustration produced increases in aggression in both genders. Although both genders showed robust startle increases during stress, startle activation was related to increases in aggression in men and decreases in aggression in women. These findings suggest that general stress and experiences of negative emotion trigger physical aggressive responses more strongly in men than in women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A time course analysis of the synesthetic colour priming effect.

A currently unresolved issue in research on synesthesia concerns the extent to which synesthetic experiences arise automatically. To shed light on this issue, we manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in a synesthetic colour priming task (i.e., 0 ms, 200 ms, 1,000 ms). Results show that 200-ms presentations of synesthetic inducers produce reliable synesthetic colour priming at short SOAs. Based on this finding, we conclude that synesthesia is produced by fast-acting, automatic processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The causal effects of emotion on couples' cognition and behavior.

The authors conducted 2 translational studies that assessed the causal effects of emotion on maladaptive cognitions and behaviors in couples. Specifically, the authors examined whether negative emotions increased and positive emotions decreased partner attributions and demand-withdraw behaviors. Study 1 (N=164) used video clips to assess the effects of emotion on individuals' attributions. Study 2 (N=47 couples) was a therapy analogue study intended to assess whether emotion generated from couples' conversations would influence subsequent attributions and behaviors. Results indicate that participants in the negative emotion conditions tended to attribute more blame to their partners and were more likely to engage in demand-withdraw patterns and other negative behaviors than were those in the positive emotion conditions. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol expectancy priming and drinking behavior: The role of compatibility between prime and expectancy content.

According to information-processing models of alcohol use, alcohol expectancies constitute representations in long-term memory that may be activated in the presence of drinking-related cues, thereby influencing alcohol consumption. A fundamental implication of this approach is that primed expectancies should affect drinking only for those individuals who possess the specific expectancies primed. To test this notion, in the present study, participants were initially assessed on 3 distinct domains of positive alcohol expectancies. Approximately 1 week later, they completed an ad libitum drinking study during which only a single expectancy domain (sociability) was primed in the experimental condition. Consistent with predictions, following exposure to sociability primes but not control primes, individuals with stronger expectancies that alcohol would enhance sociability uniquely showed increased placebo consumption of nonalcoholic beer. These results, which demonstrate the moderating role of compatibility between the specific content of primes and that of underlying expectancies, offer new, direct support for memory network-based models of drinking behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goal priming and eating behavior: Enhancing self-regulation by environmental cues.

Objective: Several lines of research have shown that the confrontation with attractive food can trigger overeating, especially in restrained eaters. This effect may be driven by a hedonic orientation toward food which temporarily overrules the goal of dieting in the regulation of behavior. The present study was designed to provide an experimental demonstration of this effect in a naturalistic setting, and to show that reactivating the goal of dieting by a subtle prime in the environment can help restrained eaters to regulate their eating behavior in tempting situations. Design: In a local store where the smell of grilled chicken was present, we observed the number of free meat snacks customers sampled from a tray after they had been primed with the dieting goal or not. Main Outcome Measures: Number of snacks consumed. Results: Consistent with hypotheses, restrained eaters ate more than unrestrained eaters in the control condition. However, they reduced their eating behavior when primed with dieting, whereas this manipulation did not affect unrestrained eaters. Conclusion: This study shows that unobtrusively priming the goal of dieting can enhance self-regulation in tempting eating situations. These results are discussed in the context of recent advances in our understanding of nonconscious behavior regulation and their applications to health behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-modal evaluative priming: Emotional sounds influence the processing of emotion words.

Cross-modal priming occurs when a prime presented in one sensory modality influences responses to a target in a different sensory modality. Currently, demonstrations of cross-modal evaluative priming have been sparse and limited. In the present study, we seek to partially rectify this state of affairs by examining cross-modal evaluative priming from auditory primes to visual targets. Significant cross-modal priming effects were found, but only for negative primes. Results are discussed in terms of the negativity bias, and several suggestions are provided for using cross-modal evaluative priming to address theoretically important questions about emotion and cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming effects of television food advertising on eating behavior.

Objective: Health advocates have focused on the prevalence of advertising for calorie-dense low-nutrient foods as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. This research tests the hypothesis that exposure to food advertising during TV viewing may also contribute to obesity by triggering automatic snacking of available food. Design: In Experiments 1a and 1b, elementary-school-age children watched a cartoon that contained either food advertising or advertising for other products and received a snack while watching. In Experiment 2, adults watched a TV program that included food advertising that promoted snacking and/or fun product benefits, food advertising that promoted nutrition benefits, or no food advertising. The adults then tasted and evaluated a range of healthy to unhealthy snack foods in an apparently separate experiment. Main Outcome Measures: Amount of snack foods consumed during and after advertising exposure. Results: Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising. Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the other conditions. In both experiments, food advertising increased consumption of products not in the presented advertisements, and these effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences. Conclusion: These experiments demonstrate the power of food advertising to prime automatic eating behaviors and thus influence far more than brand preference alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automaticity of cognitive control: Goal priming in response-inhibition paradigms.

Response inhibition is a hallmark of cognitive control. An executive system inhibits responses by activating a stop goal when a stop signal is presented. The authors asked whether the stop goal could be primed by task-irrelevant information in stop-signal and go/no-go paradigms. In Experiment 1, the task-irrelevant primes GO, ###, or STOP were presented in the go stimulus. Go performance was slower for STOP than for ### or GO. This suggests that the stop goal was primed by task-irrelevant information. In Experiment 2, STOP primed the stop goal only in conditions in which the goal was relevant to the task context. In Experiment 3, GO, ###, or STOP were presented as stop signals. Stop performance was slower for GO than for ### or STOP. These findings suggest that task goals can be primed and that response inhibition and executive control can be influenced by automatic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revisiting bias effects in word-initial phonological priming.

The phonological priming paradigm, in which participants respond to the second of 2 consecutively presented spoken words, has the potential to be a useful tool with which to study lexical processing. Concerns about response biases distorting the results have persisted since its introduction. This study explored the manifestation of biases by modifying the standard priming experiment such that the magnitude of priming effects using the same items could be compared at different points during the testing session. Four experiments investigated whether a recent dissociation of response biases and priming effects is evidence of lexical inhibition when the prime and target overlap by the first 3 word-initial phonemes (M. Hamburger & L. A Slowiaczek, 1996). Biases were found in conditions previously thought to prevent their influence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and behavior scientists' behavior.

Percentages of entries under "anxiety," "drive," and "emotion" in Psychological Abstracts and the Child Development Abstracts were determined for years 1945 through 1958. From 1952 onward, the post-Taylor Manifest Anxiety scale era, "only in the case of anxiety does output increase and remain consistently higher than that prior to the appearance of the MAS" for Psychological Abstracts entries. For Child Development Abstracts, marked rise in output follows the introduction of the Children's Manifest Anxiety scale in 1956. "The results of the present study clearly confirm our suspicions concerning the docility of the behavior scientist and suggest that no new principles of behavior are necessary in accounting for his behavior as compared with that of other species." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2HK66L. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A direct assessment of the role of state and trait negative emotion in aggressive behavior.

Affective priming of aggression was examined in groups low and high in trait negative emotionality (NEM) using a Buss aggression paradigm. Negative affect was induced by exposure to aversive air blasts during some intervals (threat) and not others (safe). Phasic negative affect was assessed using startle reflex potentiation, and tonic distress was indexed by startle sensitization. Participants delivered shocks faster during threat versus safe intervals, indicating that phasic distress primed aggression. Following initial exposure to air blasts, high NEM participants showed enhanced tonic distress and delivered persistently more intense shocks than low NEM participants. These findings indicate that sustained negative affect biases high stress-reactive individuals toward more intense acts of aggression, with phasic distress affecting the rapidity of aggressive response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The automaticity of emotion recognition.

Evolutionary accounts of emotion typically assume that humans evolved to quickly and efficiently recognize emotion expressions because these expressions convey fitness-enhancing messages. The present research tested this assumption in 2 studies. Specifically, the authors examined (a) how quickly perceivers could recognize expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, happiness, pride, sadness, shame, and surprise; (b) whether accuracy is improved when perceivers deliberate about each expression's meaning (vs. respond as quickly as possible); and (c) whether accurate recognition can occur under cognitive load. Across both studies, perceivers quickly and efficiently (i.e., under cognitive load) recognized most emotion expressions, including the self-conscious emotions of pride, embarrassment, and shame. Deliberation improved accuracy in some cases, but these improvements were relatively small. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the cognitive processes underlying emotion recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult aging effects on semantic and episodic priming in word recognition.

Two experiments compared automatic semantic and episodic priming effects in adult aging. In the 1st experiment, target words were semantically primed; in the 2nd experiment, targets were primed by repetition of semantically unrelated words. Both experiments involved a pronunciation task with response signals at fixed times following target onset. Consequently, priming was measured as improvement in the percentage of correct responses. Priming was also calculated with speed–accuracy measures of intercept and slope. Both types of priming effect were significant in the percentage correct and slope measures, but no age group differences were found. Furthermore, the magnitudes of the priming effects were equivalent. The age-resistant nature of semantic and episodic priming, as well as evidence for a common theoretical mechanism, is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol priming on social disinhibition.

Recent studies have suggested that exposure to rudimentary alcohol cues activates mental representations of alcohol expectancies in long-term memory, thereby promoting expectancy-consistent behavior changes. However, reliance in these previous studies on self-report measures raises the possibility that prior findings were an artifact of experimental demand. The present study was aimed at ruling out this alternative explanation by reinvestigating the effects of alcohol priming on nonconsumptive behavior using an implicit measure of social disinhibition. In three experiments, participants were exposed to either alcohol or control beverage images, then asked to type as quickly as possible the first word that came to mind in response to a series of provocative (e.g., feces) and neutral (e.g., chair) stimulus words. Participants’ response times were surreptitiously measured. Results revealed that participants exposed to images of alcohol, relative to control beverages, were faster to generate free associations to provocative, but not neutral, words, suggesting enhanced social disinhibition. This effect was limited to conditions of heightened evaluation, ruling out alternative explanations based on knowledge activation or arousal. Participants reported no suspicions regarding the connection between the image viewing and free association tasks nor any awareness that their response times had been collected. Results suggest that the behavioral effects of alcohol priming do not result from demand characteristics and offer the first evidence that exposure to rudimentary alcohol-related stimuli may suffice to influence social disinhibition in a manner akin to that expected to result from actual or placebo alcohol consumption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sandwich priming: A method for overcoming the limitations of masked priming by reducing lexical competitor effects.

An orthographically similar masked nonword prime facilitates responding in a lexical decision task (Forster & Davis, 1984). Recently, this masked priming paradigm has been used to evaluate models of orthographic coding—models that attempt to quantify prime-target similarity. One general finding is that priming effects often do not occur when prime-target similarity is moderate, a result that the authors interpret as being due to uncontrolled effects of lexical inhibition. In the present research, a new version of the masked priming paradigm, sandwich priming, was introduced in an effort to minimize the impact of lexical inhibition. Masked sandwich priming involves briefly presenting the target itself prior to the presentation of each prime. Results indicate that the new paradigm was successful. The predicted priming effects were observed for Guerrera and Forster’s (2008) T-All primes (e.g., avacitno–VACATION) and for primes differing from their targets at 3 letter positions (e.g., coshure–CAPTURE)—effects that are not found with the conventional masked priming paradigm. In addition to demonstrating the usefulness of the sandwich priming technique, these results also support the assumption that inhibitory processes play an important role in lexical processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behavior.

Previous research has documented that playing violent video games has various negative effects on social behavior in that it causes an increase in aggressive behavior and a decrease in prosocial behavior. In contrast, there has been much less evidence on the effects of prosocial video games. In the present research, 4 experiments examined the hypothesis that playing a prosocial (relative to a neutral) video game increases helping behavior. In fact, participants who had played a prosocial video game were more likely to help after a mishap, were more willing (and devoted more time) to assist in further experiments, and intervened more often in a harassment situation. Results further showed that exposure to prosocial video games activated the accessibility of prosocial thoughts, which in turn promoted prosocial behavior. Thus, depending on the content of the video game, playing video games not only has negative effects on social behavior but has positive effects as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming from letter-searched primes occurs for low- but not high-frequency targets: Automatic semantic access may not be a myth.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 34(1) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2007-19381-019). In the article "Semantic Priming From Letter-Searched Primes Occurs for Low- but Not High- Frequency Targets: Automatic Semantic Access May Not Be a Myth," by Chi-Shing Tse and James H. Neely (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2007, Vol. 33, No. 6, pp. 1143-1161), the URL for the supplemental materials was incomplete. The complete URL is http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.33.6.1143.supp] Letter-search (LS) within a prime often eliminates semantic priming. In 2 lexical decision experiments, the authors found that priming from LS primes occurred for low-frequency (LF) but not high-frequency (HF) targets whether the target's word frequency was manipulated between or within participants and whether the prime-target pairs were associated symmetrically or forward asymmetrically. For the LF targets, LS priming was (a) equivalent for forward asymmetric and symmetric pairs and (b) equal to silent-read (SR) priming for forward asymmetric pairs but less than SR priming for symmetric pairs. The typical finding of greater SR priming for response times for LF than for HF targets occurred for symmetric priming but not for forward asymmetric priming, which showed the interaction for errors. The authors consider their findings' implications for various accounts of how LS affects priming and explain the findings within J. H. Neely and D. E. Keefe's (1989) 3-process model as follows: (a) LS eliminates expectancy and semantic matching but does not reduce semantic activation and (b) expectancy contributes to SR priming for HF targets but not for LF targets, whereas the opposite is so for semantic matching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The affective regulation of cognitive priming.

Semantic and affective priming are classic effects observed in cognitive and social psychology, respectively. The authors discovered that affect regulates such priming effects. In Experiment 1, positive and negative moods were induced before one of three priming tasks; evaluation, categorization, or lexical decision. As predicted, positive affect led to both affective priming (evaluation task) and semantic priming (category and lexical decision tasks). However, negative affect inhibited such effects. In Experiment 2, participants in their natural affective state completed the same priming tasks as in Experiment 1. As expected, affective priming (evaluation task) and category priming (categorization and lexical decision tasks) were observed in such resting affective states. Hence, the authors conclude that negative affect inhibits semantic and affective priming. These results support recent theoretical models, which suggest that positive affect promotes associations among strong and weak concepts, and that negative affect impairs such associations (Clore & Storbeck, 2006; Kuhl, 2000). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mechanisms of masked priming: A meta-analysis.

The extent to which unconscious information can influence behavior has been a topic of considerable debate throughout the history of psychology. A frequently used method for studying subliminal processing is the masked priming paradigm. The authors focused on studies in which this paradigm was used. Their aim was twofold: first, to assess the magnitude of subliminal priming across the literature and to determine whether subliminal primes are processed semantically, and second, to examine potential moderators of priming effects. The authors found significant priming in their analyses, indicating that unconsciously presented information can influence behavior. Furthermore, priming was observed under circumstances in which a nonsemantic interpretation could not fully explain the effects, suggesting that subliminally presented information can be processed semantically. Nonetheless, the nonsemantic processing of primes is enhanced and priming effects are boosted when the experimental context allows the formation of automatic stimulus–response mappings. This quantitative review also revealed several moderators that influence the strength of priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory and emotion.

The purpose of this study by a 9th grade student "was to see if there were a relationship between memory and emotions." 121 Ss (junior high school students) viewed 30 words successively, each being exposed for a period of 2? sec., and then were instructed to recall them in writing. A week later dittoed lists of the same words were rated on a 5-point scale of unpleasantness-pleasantness by the Ss. "The difference in the kind of feeling, i.e., pleasant or unpleasant, seems to have no effect on memory… . Intensity of emotion does appear to affect memory." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)