Effects in the Affect Misattribution Procedure Are Modulated by Feature-Specific Attention Allocation

Abstract

Abstract. We examined whether automatic stimulus evaluation as measured by the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is moderated by the degree to which attention is assigned to the evaluative stimulus dimension (i.e., feature-specific attention allocation, FSAA). In two experiments, one group of participants completed a standard AMP while attending to evaluative stimulus information. A second group of participants completed the AMP while attending to non-evaluative stimulus information. In line with earlier work, larger AMP effects were observed when participants were encouraged to attend to evaluative stimulus information than when they were not. These observations support the idea that the impact of FSAA on measures of automatic stimulus evaluation results from a genuine change in the degree of automatic stimulus evaluation rather than a change in the degree to which automatic stimulus evaluation is picked up by these measures.

Affective priming and cognitive load: Event‐related potentials suggest an interplay of implicit affect misattribution and strategic inhibition

“… Of course, our findings do not imply that Everaert et al's () conclusions were wrong. While attention to emotion might strengthen the affective activation induced by briefly presented primes (83‐ms IAPS pictures in Everaert et al, ), this may not apply to the 800‐ms primes employed in the present study. Moreover, processes of affective activation from words and pictures certainly will be different.…”

“…Regarding an interpretation, we should first note that our prime ERP valence effects are inconsistent with the idea that the strong affective priming effect in the low-load condition was due to the fact that attention to emotion had strengthened Type 1 processes related to the intensity of affective activation (Everaert et al, 2016). This is because prime ERP valence discrimination was greatest under high load and absent under low load.…”

“…The recent study by Everaert et al (2016) might provide an explanation for our failure to find stronger affective priming under cognitive load. These authors distinguished two types of processes in AMP-like procedures.…”

“…As outlined above, we suggest that this applied to the low-load condition and not, as expected, to the high-load condition because participants by default tried to inhibit the processing of the prime's 4 Of course, our findings do not imply that Everaert et al's (2016) conclusions were wrong. While attention to emotion might strengthen the affective activation induced by briefly presented primes (83-ms IAPS pictures in Everaert et al, 2016), this may not apply to the 800-ms primes employed in the present study. Moreover, processes of affective activation from words and pictures certainly will be different.…”

Does sunshine prime loyal … or summer? Effects of associative relatedness on the evaluative priming effect in the valent/neutral categorisation task

“…Correspondingly, the modulation of evaluative stimulus processing by feature-specific attention allocation was found with different paradigms as well, such as the affective misattribution procedure (e.g., see Everaert, Spruyt, & De Houwer, 2016). Our findings provide further evidence, however, for the fact that attention to valence alone does not in and of itself lead to evaluative congruency effects.…”