29th Annual Student Research Conference
Effects of Subliminal Affective Priming in an Emotional Valence Classification Task
Taylor K. Watson* and Nicholas D. Evans
Dr. Terry Palmer, Faculty Mentor
This study tests whether unrecognizable/undetectable facial expressions can nevertheless influence cognitive processing. On each trial, participants classified a target word as conveying either positive or negative emotions. Unbeknownst to these participants, each target word was preceded by a congruent or incongruent subliminal facial expression (happy or sad). Average response times to the congruent and incongruent trials were not statistically different. In contrast to several recent studies, these results suggest that, in the absence of consciousness, facial expressions fail to influence lexical processing.
Keywords: Affective priming, Facial processing , Emotional processing , Subliminal prime, Attention, Facial expression, Lexical decison task, Emotional valence
Topic(s):Psychology
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: 11-3
Location: GEO-SUB
Time: 3:30