Effects of the Activation of Affective Information on Stereotyping: When Sadness Increases Stereotype Use

The impact of minimal exposure to affective information on mood and its moderation by prime visibility: a meta-analysis

This article presents a meta-analysis of the impact of minimal exposure to affective stimuli on the emergence of enduring conscious affective feelings. Theories often assume that such affective feelings are linked to automatic appraisals of events (i.e. in the absence of an evaluative processing goal). However, few studies have tested this hypothesis. Moreover, they have provided divergent results. We propose a meta-analysis of these studies to get a clearer picture on this issue. The meta-analysis includes 22 studies (37 effect sizes; combined N = 2159) in which participants were repeatedly exposed to affective stimuli in the absence of an evaluative processing goal before their mood was measured. In this analysis, we focused on the type of stimulus presentation (i.e. visible vs. masked) as well as on the type of stimulus (i.e. faces, pictures, words). The results indicate that the effect of a stimulus is moderated by the visibility of the stimuli. Repeated exposure to visible stimuli leads to congruency effects (i.e. positive stimuli lead to positive feelings), whereas exposure to masked stimuli leads to contrast effects (i.e. positive stimuli lead to negative feelings). Moreover, these effects seem to be restricted to some types of stimuli, with no detectable effects of emotional faces.

The impact of automatic evaluation on mood: an awareness-dependent effect

How do affective feelings arise? Most theories consider that affective feelings result from the appraisals of an event, these appraisals being the consequences of automatic evaluations processes that can occur pre-consciously. However, studies testing this hypothesis have provided divergent results. We hypothesised that the discrepancy could be due to the visibility of the affective stimuli. We conducted two studies in which we manipulated this factor. Moreover, to exclude a possible explanation of these effects in terms of semantic priming or of experimental demand, we measured participants' facial expressions with EMG in addition to self-report measures (BMIS). The two studies showed that repeated brief exposure to visible positive stimuli (words, Experiment 1 - pictures, Experiment 2) led to more positive feelings than exposure to negative stimuli. In contrast, when the stimuli were masked, the reversed pattern of results was observed. Results on facial EMG indicate similar effects. Consistent with the automatic evaluation hypothesis, the results suggest that assimilative effects of affective stimuli on affective feelings can be observed after a repeated brief presentation of primes, provided that the stimuli are visible. The contrast effects observed when stimuli were masked appear reliable but remain in need for further theoretical explanation.

The modulation of the evaluative priming effect by phasic affect

Previous research suggests that affect modulates the sequential priming effect such that positive affect yields robust sequential priming effects, whereas negative affect inhibits them. Although this observation has received substantial empirical support for semantic priming effects (i.e., faster responding to a target word following the earlier presentation of a meaningfully related prime), the evidence is rather scant concerning evaluative priming effects (i.e., faster and/or more accurate evaluative responding to a target word when it is preceded by an evaluatively consistent rather than an evaluatively inconsistent prime). The present research aimed at filling this gap, demonstrating the impact of phasic (temporally short-lived) affect on evaluative priming effects. In doing so, we addressed the shortcomings of previous research as we implemented affective contexts that changed from trial to trial in a within-participants design. In Experiments 1 and 2, brief positive music excerpts yielded a reliable evaluative priming effect, whereas brief negative excerpts inhibited it. In Experiment 3, we replicated and generalized these findings using a proprioceptive facial feedback procedure. Our results corroborate and extend previous research by showing that brief negative affect inhibits priming effects as compared to brief positive affect or a control condition. These findings attest to the flexibility of the evaluative priming effect and suggest it is permeable to subtle affective contexts that influence its magnitude.

Higher order influences on evaluative priming: Processing styles moderate congruity effects

A growing body of research challenges the automaticity of evaluative priming (EP). The present research adds to this literature by suggesting that EP is sensitive to processing styles. We relied on previous research showing that EP is determined by the extent to which the prime and the target events on a given trial are processed as a unified compound. Here, we further hypothesised that processing styles encouraging the inclusion of the prime to the target episode support congruity effects, whereas processing styles that enhance the exclusion of the prime from the target episode interrupt (or reverse) these effects. In Experiment 1, a preceding similarity search task produced a congruity effect, whereas a dissimilarity search task eliminated and (non-significantly) reversed this effect. In Experiments 2 and 3, we replicated and extended these findings using a global/local processing manipulation. Overall, these findings confirm that EP is flexible, open to top-down influences and strategic regulation.

Mortality salience and positive affect influence adolescents' attitudes toward peers with physical disabilities: terror management and broaden and build theories

Attitudes toward teenagers with and without physical disabilities, and their social acceptance, were examined from the perspective of terror management theory and the broaden and build theory. Participants (n = 390, aged 13-17) were divided into 3 experimental conditions: positive emotions, mortality salience, and control. Then, they were shown either a picture depicting an adolescent sitting on a regular chair or in a wheelchair and were asked to assess the characteristics of the person in the picture and their willingness to be in his or her company. The findings suggest that both types of manipulations enhanced the personality assessment and social acceptance of adolescents with disabilities compared to adolescents without disabilities and compared to the control condition. Girls reported more favorable attitudes toward another adolescent than boys did. The study indicates that seemingly contradictory manipulations may lead to social acceptance of adolescents with disabilities.

Arousal, Processing, and Risk Taking: Consequences of Intergroup Anger

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based anger has subtle and less explicitly controlled consequences for information processing, using measures that do not rely on self-reported emotional experience. Specifically, the authors show that intergroup anger involves arousal (Experiment 1), reduces systematic processing of persuasive messages (Experiment 2), is moderated by group identification (Experiment 2, posttest), and compared to intergroup fear, increases risk taking (Experiment 3). These findings provide converging evidence that consistent with IET, emotions triggered by social categorization have psychologically consequential effects and are not evident solely in self-reports.

Thinking Straight While Seeing Red

Because angry people apparently rely on heuristic cues when making judgments, anger has been claimed to trigger superficial, nonanalytic information processing. In three studies, the authors found that induced anger promoted analytic processing. Experiment 1 showed that angry participants were more likely to discriminate between weak and strong arguments than participants in neutral moods. Experiment 2 demonstrated that anger overrode dispositional preferences not to process, causing even those low in need for cognition to process analytically. Experiment 3 reconciled these findings with previous work by showing that angry people used accessible, valid, and relevant heuristics but otherwise processed analytically, as indicated by attitude change and elaboration data. Together, these experiments showed that angry people can have both the capacity and motivation to process and that their selective use of heuristics reflects the cue's perceived validity and not the failure to process analytically.