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How do people estimate the income that is needed to be rich? Two correlative survey studies (Study 1 and 2, N = 568) and one registered experimental study (Study 3, N = 500) examined the cognitive mechanisms that are used to derive an answer to this question. We tested whether individuals use their personal income (PI) as a self-generated anchor to derive an estimate of the income needed to be rich (= income wealth threshold estimation, IWTE). On a bivariate level, we found the expected positive relationship between one's PI and IWTE and, in line with previous findings, we found that people do not consider themselves rich. Furthermore, we predicted that individuals additionally use information about their social status within their social circles to make an IWTE. The findings from study 2 support this notion and show that only self-reported high-income individuals show different IWTEs depending on relative social status: Individuals in this group who self-reported a high status produced higher IWTEs than individuals who self-reported low status. The registered experimental study could not replicate this pattern robustly, although the results trended non-significantly in the same direction. Together, the findings revealed that the income of individuals as well as the social environment are used as sources of information to make IWTE judgements, although they are likely not the only important predictors.

These pre-registered studies shed light on the cues that individuals use to identify rich people. In two studies (N = 598), we first developed a factor-analytical model that describes the content and the mental structure of 24 wealth cues. A third within-subject study (N = 89) then assessed the perception of rich subgroups based on this model of wealth cues. Participants evaluated the extent to which the wealth cues applied to two distinct subgroups of rich people. The results show: German and US-American participants think that one can identify rich people based on the same set of cues which can be grouped along the following dimensions: luxury consumption, expensive hobbies, spontaneous spending, greedy behavior, charismatic behavior, self-presentation, and specific possessions. However, Germans and US-Americans relied on these cues to different degrees to diagnose wealth in others. Moreover, we found evidence for subgroup-specific wealth cue profiles insofar as target individuals who acquired their wealth via internal (e.g., hard work) compared to external means (e.g., lottery winners) were evaluated differently on these wealth cues, presumably because of their perceived differences in valence and competence. Together, this research provides new insights in the cognitive representation of the latent construct of wealth. Practical implications for research on the perception of affluence, and implications for political decision makers, are discussed in the last section.

Moral dilemmas are frequently used to examine psychological processes that drive decisions between adhering to deontological norms and optimizing the outcome. However, commonly used dilemmas are generally unrealistic and confound moral principle and (in)action so that results obtained with these dilemmas might not generalize to other situations. In the present research, we introduce new dilemmas that are based on real-life events. In two studies (a European student sample and a North American MTurk sample, total N = 789), we show that the new factual dilemmas were perceived to be more realistic and less absurd than commonly used dilemmas. In addition, factual dilemmas induced higher participant engagement. From this, we draw the preliminary conclusion that factual dilemmas are more suitable for investigating moral cognition. Moreover, factual dilemmas can be used to examine the generalizability of previous results concerning action (vs. inaction) and concerning a wider range of deontological norms.

Causes of behavior are often classified as either dispositional (e.g., personality) or situational (e.g., circumstances). However, the disposition–situation dichotomy confounds locus (internal vs. external) and stability (unstable vs. stable) of attribution, rendering it unclear whether locus or stability drives changes in dispositionality. In the present research, we examine the dispositional shift—that is, psychologically distant (vs. near) events are attributed to dispositional (vs. situational) causes. Using construal level theory, we hypothesize that the dispositional shift is caused by a change in stability (but not necessarily locus) of attribution. Two experiments support this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, distant (vs. near) future events were attributed to more stable causes. In Experiment 2, actions by a socially distant person (vs. oneself) were also attributed to more stable (but also more internal) causes. Thus, important psychological manipulations, here psychological distance, can influence causal dimensions selectively, supporting the independence of stability and locus of attribution.

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 (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Ainslie's account of willpower addresses many important mechanisms (e.g., habit, visceral activation, and implementation intention). We argue that a model of willpower should be grounded in general psychological principles and with a primary focus on their interplay. We discuss the reflective-impulsive model that covers willpower and impulsiveness as special constellations of processes that govern various forms of cognition and behavior.

Typical moral dilemmas pitting the consequences of a given action against the action’s consistency with moral norms confound several determinants of moral judgments. Dissociating these determinants, the CNI model allows researchers to quantify sensitivity to consequences, sensitivity to norms, and general preference for inaction over action regardless of consequences and norms. However, with the currently available set of dilemmas for research using the CNI model, the model is not suitable for studies with individual-difference designs. To overcome this limitation, the current research investigated the suitability of an extended dilemma battery to make the CNI model amenable for individual-difference research, examining relations of its parameters with psychopathy, empathic concern, need for cognition, self-reported utilitarianism, behavioral activation/inhibition, moral identity, and religiosity. The results support the suitability of the CNI model for individual-difference research with the extended dilemma battery, providing more nuanced insights into the underpinnings of individual differences in moral dilemma judgments.

In increasingly diverse societies, discrimination against social groups and their members continues to be a public and political concern. Research has addressed three basic cognitive processes that precede discrimination: categorization, stereotype/prejudice activation, and stereotype/prejudice application, suggesting that these processes occur in an automatic fashion. However, there are multiple components of automaticity, including unawareness, efficiency, unintentionality, and uncontrollability. Most of the previous research implies that these components of automaticity converge with respect to cognitive antecedents of discrimination. Here, we review evidence on the distinct components of automaticity in order to assess whether (a) categorization, (b) stereotype/prejudice activation, and (c) stereotype/prejudice application occur (1) without awareness, (2) efficiently, and (3) goal-independently. We highlight evidence indicating convergence or divergence of the automaticity components during each of the processing stages. This analysis provides readers with an up-to-date review that helps to evaluate whether a multi-component approach to automaticity is of additional benefit in aggregating knowledge about the cognitive antecedents of discrimination. We discuss open issues and avenues for future research.

This is an independent replication of a study conducted by Gable and Harmon-Jones [Gable, P. A., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2008). Approach-Motivated Positive Affect Reduces Breadth of Attention. Psychological Science , 19 ( 5 ), 476–482]. In this influential paper, the authors demonstrated positive affect high in approach motivation to reduce the breadth of attention. The present replication study includes a direct replication of Experiment 2 from the original paper, comparing positive affect high in approach motivation with neutral affect, as well as a conceptual replication, using different affective and control stimuli and comparing positive affect high in approach motivation, positive affect low in approach motivation and neutral affect within one experiment. In both the direct and conceptual replication, we observed positive stimuli that were associated with high approach motivation to reduce attentional breadth in a Navon task when compared to control stimuli, thus replicating the effect reported by Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008) . These results increase confidence in the generalizability of the original findings across cultures, as well as across different stimuli.

Zusammenfassung. In letzter Zeit mehren sich Hinweise darauf, dass gehäuft falsch-positive Befunde in wissenschaftlichen Publikationen berichtet werden und so die Forschungsliteratur ein verzerrtes Bild der Realität widerspiegelt. Das Fachkollegium Psychologie der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft hat dieses Problem aufgegriffen und die möglichen Ursachen von falsch-positiv Befunden diskutiert. Dieser Artikel gibt den Inhalt dieser Diskussion wieder und möchte Antragssteller auffordern, diese Problematik bei Forschungsanträgen stärker zu beachten. Auch appellieren wir an Antragsteller, Gutachter und Herausgeber, den Stellenwert von negativen Befunden sowie von Replikationen bei Forschungsanträgen und wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten einschließlich klinischer Studien stärker zu berücksichtigen.

Duality models generally assume that human psychology is based on two separate systems of information processing. These systems have specific characteristics that differentiate them from one another. Such models are increasingly common in social psychology today. A selection of duality models is discussed and categorized according to three factors: the type of mental representation used in the specified processes (experiential vs. nonexperiential), the methods of processing (associative vs. propositional), and the differing degree of automaticity (based on the aspects of efficiency, awareness, intentionality, and controllability) of the processes. In addition, models' statements about the superiority of one process over the other are enumerated. Foundational models of attribution, stereotyping, persuasion, and more general models are explained in an overview. Central aspects of these foundational models are extracted and applied in a discussion of current duality models in general social psychology, as well as newer dual-process models of attitudes, moral judgments, and self-regulation. Models positing a process superior in information processing are contrasted with models positing two processes with different specializations in information processing, and the implications of improved integration and specialization are discussed. Keywords: dual-process models; dual-systems models; associative processing; propositional processing; automaticity; self-regulation; attitudes; moral judgment; persuasion; stereotyping

In moral psychology, typically used dilemmas contrast options where deontology and utilitarianism demand mutually exclusive actions. However, these dilemmas are usually unrealistic thought experiments, with implausibly few options and implausible statements about the consequences of these options. The present research examines whether variations in dilemma plausibility influence moral judgments. This influence might result from two psychological factors—cost–benefit calculations and reactance-type processes. Both can be predicted to cause more deontological judgments for implausible compared to plausible moral dilemmas. In two experiments (total N = 417), dilemmas were modified to create a plausible and an implausible version without altering the actions and their alleged consequences. We observed that low (compared to high) plausibility within dilemmas increased deontological judgments. Consequently, varying plausibility constitutes a potential confound when examining moral cognition by comparing different dilemma versions. We suggest using only plausible dilemmas to examine moral judgments.

Theory suggests that stimulus evaluations automatically evoke approach–avoidance behavior. However, the extent to which approach–avoidance behavior is triggered automatically is not yet clear. Furthermore, the nature of automatically triggered approach–avoidance behavior is controversial. We review research on two views on the type of approach–avoidance behavior that is triggered automatically (arm flexion/extension, distance change). Present evidence supports the distance-change view and corroborates the notion of an automatic pathway from evaluation to distance-change behavior. We discuss underlying mechanisms (direct stimulus–response links, outcome anticipations, goals) as well as implications regarding the flexibility of the evaluation–behavior link.

There is inconsistent evidence as to whether angry faces evoke approach or avoidance tendencies. The present research sought to resolve this debate. We suggest that approach–avoidance movements can serve various goals (e.g., affiliation, aggression). Furthermore, we assume that these goals determine the effect of angry faces on approach–avoidance tendencies. In particular, angry faces communicate aggressive intentions and may therefore evoke aggressive tendencies in the perceiver. Thus, angry faces should trigger approach only when it serves aggression but not when it serves affiliation. Three studies showed that angry faces facilitated approach, when the behavior was represented as aggressive approach, but not when it was represented as peaceful approach. Furthermore, when approach was represented as peaceful approach and, hence, aggression was not an available option, angry faces facilitated avoidance. In sum, angry faces can evoke approach or avoidance, depending on the goals associated with these behaviors.

This electroencephalographic study investigated if negating one's emotion results in paradoxical effects or leads to effective emotional downregulation. Healthy participants were asked to downregulate their emotions to happy and fearful faces by using negated emotional cue words (e.g., no fun, no fear). Cue words were congruent with the emotion depicted in the face and presented prior to each face. Stimuli were presented in blocks of happy and fearful faces. Blocks of passive stimulus viewing served as control condition. Active regulation reduced amplitudes of early event-related brain potentials (early posterior negativity, but not N170) and the late positive potential for fearful faces. A fronto-central negativity peaking at about 250 ms after target face onset showed larger amplitude modulations during downregulation of fearful and happy faces. Behaviorally, negating was more associated with reappraisal than with suppression. Our results suggest that in an emotional context, negation processing could be quite effective for emotional downregulation but that its effects depend on the type of the negated emotion (pleasant vs unpleasant). Results are discussed in the context of dual process models of cognition and emotion regulation.

Thus far, it has been shown that positive compared to negative mood increases creativity, for instance, as measured by performance in the remote associate task, where participants are asked to find the common remote associate for three clue words (e.g., RABBIT CLOUD MILK solution word WHITE). The present experiments show that very brief variations in affect, lasting for only a few seconds and changing from trial to trial within participants, are sufficient to modulate creativity in that task, presumably by modulating the breadth of semantic spread. Using word valence of remote associates themselves (Experiment 1), and consonant and dissonant chords (Experiment 2) as affect inductions, it was observed that brief positive compared to negative affect increased creative performance. This evidence extends the affect-modulation hypothesis to a temporal micro-level.

International audience; Research suggests that affective stimuli facilitate behavior that causes a compatible change in distance (i.e., approach positive and avoid negative stimuli). In natural settings, however, behavior often causes different consequences at different points in time. It is unclear whether affective stimuli interact with immediate or ultimate action-consequences (i.e., consequences that are more removed in time). To shed light on this, we tested whether stimulus valence facilitates behavior that ultimately causes a compatible change in distance, even when this behavior immediately causes an incompatible distance change. Participants moved a manikin on a computer screen toward or away from a positive or negative word. On half of the trials, moving the manikin ultimately in one direction required an initial movement in the opposite direction. Results from two studies showed that stimulus valence facilitated ultimate-compatible distance change regardless of the initial direction. This suggests that affective stimuli facilitate behavior that is relatively farsighted.

Previous research suggests that spontaneous evaluative responses to a stimulus depend on how that stimulus is categorised. The present research indicates that such categorisation effects depend on task-specific aspects of the measure, thereby concealing or overriding effects of unattended category cues. Results showed that affective priming effects in a paradigm based on response interference depended on participants' attention to the category membership of the primes. These effects were reflected in: (a) reduced effect sizes; (b) reduced internal consistencies; and (c) reduced correlations to corresponding self-reports when attention was directed toward alternative categories. Such attention-related decrements were not obtained for a priming paradigm based on affect misattribution, which showed reliable priming effects irrespective of participants' attention to the relevant categories. These results challenge the ubiquity of categorisation effects on spontaneous evaluations, suggesting that the impact of...

Theories from diverse areas of psychology assume that affective stimuli facilitate approach and avoidance behavior because they elicit motivational orientations that prepare the organism for appropriate responses. Recent evidence casts serious doubt on this assumption. Instead of motivational orientations, evaluative-coding mechanisms may be responsible for the effect of stimulus valence on approach-avoidance responses. Three studies tested contrasting predictions derived from these two accounts. Results supported motivational theories, as stimulus valence facilitated compatible approach-avoidance responses even though participants had no intention to approach or to avoid the stimuli, and the valence of the response labels was dissociated from the approach and avoidance movements (Study 1). Stimulus valence also facilitated compatible approach-avoidance responses when participants were not required to process the valence of the stimuli (Studies 2a and 2b). These findings are at odds with the evaluative-coding account and support the notion of a unique, automatic link between the perception of valence and approach-avoidance behavior.

Two experiments examined the relation between stereotype disconfirmation and attentional processes. Using an instrumental learning-paradigm, we successfully simulated stereotype acquisition and the subsequent subtyping of disconfirming exemplars. While replicating established markers of subtyping, the present research demonstrates a hitherto neglected cognitive consequence of subtyping: Predictable stereotype disconfirmation increased attention to features that facilitated discriminating between confirming and disconfirming exemplars, and reduced attention to features associated with the original stereotype. These effects were not observed when stereotype disconfirmation was not easily predictable and, hence, subtyping proved difficult. The discussion focuses on implications for research on subtyping and stereotype change.

Previous research has shown that extended training in non-stereotypic responding (i.e., negating stereotypes and affirming counterstereotypes) can reduce automatic stereotype activation. In the present research, we claim that the effects of non-stereotypic association training on automatic stereotype activation are primarily driven by the affirmation of counterstereotypes rather than by the negation of stereotypes. In two experiments, participants received extensive training in either (a) negating stereotype-congruent information or (b) affirming stereotype-incongruent information, and then completed a measure of automatic stereotyping (Experiment 1) or automatic evaluation (Experiment 2). Consistent with our predictions, only training in the affirmation of counterstereotypes led to a reduction in the activation of stereotypes and negative evaluations. In contrast, extended training in the negation of stereotypes enhanced rather than reduced the activation of stereotypes and negative evaluations. Implications for prejudice and stereotype control are discussed.

Over the last decade, implicit measures of mental associations (e.g., Implicit Association Test, sequential priming) have become increasingly popular in many areas of psychological research. Even though successful applications provide preliminary support for the validity of these measures, their underlying mechanisms are still controversial. The present article addresses the role of a particular mechanism that is hypothesized to mediate the influence of activated associations on task performance in many implicit measures: response interference (RI). Based on a review of relevant evidence, we argue that RI effects in implicit measures depend on participants’ attention to association-relevant stimulus features, which in turn can influence the reliability and the construct validity of these measures. Drawing on a moderated-mediation model (MMM) of task performance in RI paradigms, we provide several suggestions on how to address these problems in research using implicit measures.

An important goal for consumer psychology is to understand when and why consumer behavior is driven by impulses versus rational decisions. Models accounting for the different shades of consumer behavior should spell out how impulsive versus reflective precursors of action are instigated, how they transform into behavior, when they conflict with each other, how such conflicts are resolved, and which boundary conditions (such as ego depletion) affect the relative influence of impulsive versus reflective precursors on behavior. Introducing the notion of free will into consumer psychology may discourage researchers from investigating the specific mechanisms underlying consumer choice and behavior.

Previous research showed that priming effects in the affective misattribution procedure (AMP) are unaffected by direct warnings to avoid an influence of the primes. The present research examined whether a priming influence is diminished by task procedures that encourage accurate judgments of the targets. Participants were motivated to categorize the affective meaning of nonsense targets accurately by being made to believe that a true word was presented in each trial and by providing feedback on (allegedly) incorrect responses. This condition produced robust priming effects. Priming was however reduced and less reliable relative to more typical AMP conditions in which participants guessed the meaning of openly presented nonsense targets. Affective judgments of nonsense targets were not affected by advance knowledge of the response mapping during the priming phase, which argues against a response-priming explanation of AMP effects. These findings show that affective primes influence evaluative judgments even in conditions in which the motivation to provide accurate responses is high and a priming of motor responses is not possible. Priming effects were however weaker with high accuracy motivation, suggesting that a focus on accurate judgments is an effective strategy to control for an unwanted priming influence in the AMP.

The present paper concerns the motivational underpinnings and behavioral correlates of the prevention or stopping of negative stimulation – a situation referred to as relief. Relief is of great theoretical and applied interest. Theoretically, it is tied to theories linking affect, emotion and motivational systems (Carver & Scheier, 1990; Gray & McNaughton, 2000; Higgins, 1997; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990). Importantly, these theories make different predictions regarding the association between relief and motivational systems. Moreover, relief is a prototypical antecedent of counterfactual emotions, which involve specific cognitive processes compared to factual or mere anticipatory emotions. Practically, relief may be an important motivator of addictive and phobic behaviors (Mowrer, 1951; Ostafin & Brooks, 2011), self destructive behaviors (Favazza, 1998; Franklin, Lee, Hanna, & Prinstein, 2013), and social influence (Dolinski & Nawrat, 1998). In the present paper, we will first provide a review of conflicting conceptualizations of relief. We will then present an integrative relief model (IRMO) that aims at resolving existing theoretical conflicts. We then review evidence relevant to distinctive predictions regarding the moderating role of various procedural features of relief situations. We conclude that our integrated model results in a better understanding of existing evidence on the affective and motivational underpinnings of relief, but that further evidence is needed to come to a more comprehensive evaluation of the viability of IRMO.

Three studies examined how food deprivation influences the immediate valence of food stimuli as well as spontaneous motivational tendencies toward them. We assumed that immediate reactions towards food stimuli should be tuned to the basic needs of the organism. In Study 1, the immediate valence of food names as a function of need state was assessed using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) in a quasi-experimental design. Food deprivation led to a more positive immediate valence of food items. In Study 2, these results were replicated using the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task. In Study 3, immediate motivational reactions toward pictorial food stimuli were assessed. As hypothesized, approach reactions were facilitated for participants tested before as compared to after lunch, even in a sample with eating disorders. We thus conclude that the immediate valence of edible objects partially reflects regulation in the service of need fulfillment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dual-system models explain social cognition and behavior as a joint function of 2 interconnected mental faculties, each operating according to different principles. In this article, we use the Reflective-Impulsive Model as an example and first describe 3 major advantages of dual-system models, i.e., their integrative power, their foundation in well-established constructs of cognition and neuroscience; and the ease with which they can explain the interplay of judgments and nonjudgmental processes. We then turn to current debates on the adequate number of systems, as well as on the role of freedom and consciousness. We conclude by stating that dual-system models are versatile tools to integrate existing findings and to stimulate new research in social cognition and beyond.

(2006). AUTHORS' RESPONSES: Duality Models in Social Psychology: Response to Commentaries. Psychological Inquiry: Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 265-268.

This article describes a dual-system model of consumer behavior. This model is based on the assumption that all human behaviors are a joint function of reflective and impulsive mechanisms. Those mechanisms have different principles of operation but contribute to the act of buying. However, the relative contribution of impulsive and reflective processes depends on personal and contextual circumstances. The operation and interaction of the 2 systems at different stages of information processing is described and applied to the dynamics of consumer behavior, with a special emphasis on impulse buying.

The present research investigated whether automatic social-cognitive skills are based on the same representations and processes as their controlled counterparts. Using the cognitive task of negating valence, the authors demonstrate that enhanced practice in negating the valence of a stimulus can lead to changes in the underlying associative representation. However, procedural, rule-based components of negations were generally unaffected by practice (Experiments 1-3). Moreover, negations of evaluative stimuli did not influence automatic evaluative responses to these stimuli, unless the negation was included in the associative representation of a stimulus (Experiments 4-6). These results suggest that some practice-related skill improvements are limited to conditions in which a general procedure can be substituted by the retrieval of results of previous applications from associative memory. Implications for research on automaticity and social cognition are discussed.

Two experiments investigated the influence of approach/avoidance–related motor actions on attention allocation to affective stimuli. Employing a modified visual search paradigm, Experiment 1 demonstrated that orientation–incongruent stimuli have a stronger attention grabbing power than orientation–congruent stimuli. Using a dual–task paradigm, Experiment 2 extended these findings by showing that incongruency effects in attention allocation mirror differences in the attentional resources required to encode affective information, such that orientation–incongruent stimuli require more attentional capacity than orientation–congruent stimuli. Interestingly, effects were generally stronger for positive as compared to negative stimuli, and for approach– as compared to avoidance–related motor actions. Functional and theoretical implications are discussed.

This article describes a 2-systems model that explains social behavior as a joint function of reflective and impulsive processes. In particular, it is assumed that social behavior is controlled by 2 interacting systems that follow different operating principles. The reflective system generates behavioral decisions that are based on knowledge about facts and values, whereas the impulsive system elicits behavior through associative links and motivational orientations. The proposed model describes how the 2 systems interact at various stages of processing, and how their outputs may determine behavior in a synergistic or antagonistic fashion. It extends previous models by integrating motivational components that allow more precise predictions of behavior. The implications of this reflective-impulsive model are applied to various phenomena from social psychology and beyond. Extending previous dual-process accounts, this model is not limited to specific domains of mental functioning and attempts to integrate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mechanisms.

The present research demonstrates that very brief variations in affect, being around 1 s in length and changing from trial to trial independently from semantic relatedness of primes and targets, modulate the amount of semantic priming. Implementing consonant and dissonant chords (Experiments 1 and 5), naturalistic sounds (Experiment 2), and visual facial primes (Experiment 3) in an (in)direct semantic priming paradigm, as well as brief facial feedback in a summative priming paradigm (Experiment 4), yielded increased priming effects under brief positive compared to negative affect. Furthermore, this modulation took place on the level of semantic spreading rather than on strategic mechanisms (Experiment 5). Alternative explanations such as distraction, motivation, arousal, and cognitive tuning could be ruled out. This phasic affective modulation constitutes a mechanism overlooked thus far that may contaminate priming effects in all priming paradigms that involve affective stimuli. Furthermore, this mechanism provides a novel explanation for the observation that priming effects are usually larger for positive than for negative stimuli. Finally, it has important implications for linguistic research, by suggesting that association norms may be biased for affective words.

This study investigated startle reflex modulation in 33 healthy student participants during the processing of negated emotional items. To build upon previous research, our particular interest was to find out whether processing of negated emotional items modulates emotional responding in line with the logical meaning of the negated expression, or instead leads to paradox emotional effects that point in the direction opposite the one logically implied by the negation. Startle reflex modulation was assessed during silent reading of pleasant and unpleasant nouns. The nouns were either paired with the possessive pronoun my or with the negation word no. The startle eyeblink amplitude was enhanced during processing of the unpleasant pronoun–noun phrases and attenuated during processing of the pleasant phrases. Negation attenuated the startle eyeblink for negated unpleasant nouns and enhanced it for negated pleasant nouns. In line with this finding, negation decreased arousal ratings for unpleasant nouns and reversed the valence ratings for pleasant nouns. Our results are the first to show an effect of negation on both peripheral physiological and subjective indices of affective responding. Our results suggest that negation may be an effective strategy for spontaneous down-regulation of emotional responses to unpleasant, but not to pleasant, stimuli.

Numerous studies suggest that processing verbal materials containing negations slows down cognition and makes it more error-prone. This suggests that processing negations affords relatively nonautomatic processes. The present research studied the role of two automaticity features (processing speed and resource dependency) for negation processing. In three experiments, we tested the impact of verbal negations on affective priming effects in the Affect Misattribution Paradigm. Going beyond previous work, the results indicate that negations can be processed unintentionally and quickly (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 3, negations failed to qualify affective priming effects when participants’ working memory was taxed by memorizing an eight-digit number. In sum, the experiments suggest that negations can be processed unintentionally, very quickly, but that they rely on working-memory resources.

The main purpose of this study was to examine if disgust toward unpalatable foods would be reduced among food-deprived subjects and if this attenuation would occur automatically even under moderate levels of food deprivation. Subjects were either satiated or food deprived for 15 hours and electromyographic activity was recorded at the levator muscle region while they were watching pictures of palatable versus unpalatable foods, and pictures of positive versus disgust-related control pictures. For control purposes, subjects' activity of the zygomaticus and corrugator muscles was also recorded. As compared with satiated subjects, food-deprived subjects exhibited stronger activity in the zygomaticus muscle region when watching pictures of palatable foods (but not when watching positive control pictures). More important, hungry subjects exhibited weaker activity in the levator muscle region when watching pictures of unpalatable foods (but not when watching disgusting control pictures). Thus, this is the first study ever to show that specific emotions (disgust) are moderated by homeostatic dysregulation automatically. Results indicate that the modulation of facial expressions might play an important role in lowering the threshold for food intake.

The present research investigated whether mental self-control strategies can reduce the automatic positivity elicited by tempting stimuli. In two studies employing chocolate as the temptation of interest, we found that participants instructed to imagine a chocolate product in a nonconsummatory manner exhibited significantly less automatic positivity with regard to the product as compared to participants instructed to imagine the hedonic, consummatory aspects of the product and control participants engaged in a neutral task. These findings were replicated in a second study. Additionally, in Study 2 we found that automatic evaluations of chocolate were lowest for participants instructed to form implementation intentions to refrain from consumption. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that mental self-control strategies such as nonconsummatory transformation and implementation intentions extend to the level of automatic processing by reducing the positivity of automatically activated affective responses. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Drawing on two alternative accounts of the affective priming effect (spreading activation vs. response interference), the present research investigated the underlying processes of how evaluative context stimuli influence implicit evaluations in the affective priming task. Employing two sequentially presented prime stimuli (rather than a single prime), two experiments showed that affective priming effects elicited by a given prime stimulus were more pronounced when this stimulus was preceded by a context prime of the opposite valence than when it was preceded by a context prime of the same valence. This effect consistently emerged for pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2) as prime stimuli. These results suggest that the impact of evaluative context stimuli on implicit evaluations is mediated by contrast effects in the attention to evaluative information rather than by additive effects in the activation of evaluative information in associative memory.