No abstract

Sequential effects in conflict processing (postconflict slowing and conflict adaptation) have primarily been studied in stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) tasks. Moreover, results obtained in SRC paradigms are often proposed as a model of higher-level motivational conflicts. The authors present 3 experiments suggesting that motivational conflicts, such as approach-approach (AA) and avoidance-avoidance (VV) conflicts partially engage different processes than SRC conflicts and thus result in different sequential effects. Instead of postconflict slowing, they predicted speeding after AA conflicts because they expect the approach motivation component of AA conflicts to briefly increase action readiness. Second, the authors expected larger conflict adaptation in VV than AA conflicts because conflict adaptation is known to be enhanced by inducing negative affect. They conducted 3 experiments with varying intertrial intervals (intertrial interval [ITI]) in which participants repeatedly solved hypothetical motivational conflicts (AA, VV) and nonconflicts (NC). In all three experiments, the authors observed postconflict speeding after AA conflicts compared to NC when the ITI was short. Conflict adaptation proved to be less reliable. These results extend previous research on sequential effects in conflict resolution by showing that sequential effects emerge also in higher-level motivational AA and VV conflicts but partially follow different rules than in SRC paradigms. (PsycINFO Database Record

In two experiments, we assessed evaluative priming effects in a task that was unrelated to the congruent or incongruent stimulus pairs. In each trial, participants saw two valent (positive or negative) pictures that formed evaluatively congruent or incongruent stimulus pairs and a letter that was superimposed on the second picture. Different from typical evaluative priming studies, participants were not required to respond to the second of the valent stimuli, but asked to categorize the letter that was superimposed on the second picture. We assessed the impact of the evaluative (in)congruency of the two pictures on the performance in responding to the letter. In addition, we manipulated attention to the evaluative dimension by asking participants in one experimental group to respond to the valence of the pictures on a subset of trials (evaluative task condition). In both experiments, we found evaluative priming effects in letter categorization responses: Participants categorized the letter faster (and sometimes more correctly) in trials with congruent picture-pairs. These effects were present only in the evaluative task condition. These findings can be explained with different resource-based accounts of evaluative priming and the additional assumption that attention to valence is necessary for evaluative congruency to affect processing resources. According to resource-based accounts valence-incongruent trials require more cognitive resources than valence-congruent trials (e.g., Hermans, Van den Broeck, & Eelen, 1998).

No abstract