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The present study investigated whether facial expressions of emotion presented outside consciousness awareness will elicit evaluative responses as assessed in affective priming. Participants were asked to evaluate pleasant and unpleasant target words that were preceded by masked or unmasked schematic (Experiment 1) or photographic faces (Experiments 1 and 2) with happy or angry expressions. They were either required to perform the target evaluation only or to perform the target evaluation and to name the emotion expressed by the face prime. Prime-target interval was 300 ms in Experiment 1 and 80 ms in Experiment 2. Naming performance confirmed the effectiveness of the masking procedure. Affective priming was evident after unmasked primes in tasks that required naming of the facial expressions for schematic and photographic faces and after unmasked primes in tasks that did not require naming for photographic faces. No affective priming was found after masked primes. The present study failed to provide evidence for affective priming with masked face primes, however, it indicates that voluntary attention to the primes enhances affective priming.

STUDIES ADDRESSING EFFECTS OF MUSIC ON VIEWERS'perceptions of film have usually presented music simultaneously with a scene of interest. In the present study, 177 undergraduates viewed film excerpts with music presentedbeforeoraftera scene featuring a single character. Whereas the film characters had emotionally neutral or subdued facial expressions, the music conveyed happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. Overall, participants tended to interpret characters' emotions in ways that were consistent with the particular emotion expressed in the music, offering evidence for both forward and backward affective priming effects. Our data confirm Boltz, Schulkind, and Kantra's (1991) findings on the role of music in foreshadowing. As far as we are aware, the effects of music on a prior scene have not been demonstrated in film music research. Our findings suggest that music does not have to be presented concurrently with onscreen images to influence viewers' interpretations of film content.

Theoretical accounts of control and behavior regulation suggest affect follows from control processing and that this affective response to control demands serves as a cue to upregulate control in the future. However, the valence of affective responses following control exertion remains unclear. We examined affective responses to conflict resolution in conflict tasks (e.g., Stroop and flanker) through meta-analyses, conceptual replications of three affective priming paradigms, and drift-diffusion modelling. Our meta-analysis of nine studies (30 effect-size estimates; N  = 992 participants) using various affect measures yielded no overall effect. However, moderator analysis indicated that the post-resolution positivity effect can be found when using the active affective priming paradigm. Contrary to prior studies, our replication study ( N  = 66) failed to find a post-resolution positivity effect, and even showed the opposite pattern (post-resolution negativity) in one of three studies. This effect was captured by extra-decisional processes ( t ₀), aligning with prior modelling work on affective priming effects. In a separate meta-analysis of affective priming effects, we found that the post-resolution positivity effect size reduced as standard error decreased, and this pattern is suggestive of publication bias. Together, these findings question the assumption of universally positive affective responses to control exertion and suggest affective valence may be context-dependent.

Semantic and affective priming have long been treated separately in psycholinguistic studies. Recently, however, the question of whether and how these two primings interact has become controversial, especially in cross-language contexts where such discussions are rare. In the present study, four mixed-design experiments were conducted with Chinese EFL learners to investigate cross-language semantic-affective interactions: 3 (prime valence: negative, positive, neutral) × 2 (semantic relatedness: related, unrelated). Results show that semantic priming effects occurred in the L1 L1 and L1 L2 conditions, whereas affective priming effects were observed in the L2 L2 condition. In the L2 L1 priming condition, only emotion primes induced cross-language priming. These results suggest that semantic and emotional accesses are activated automatically and separately, but can facilitate cross-language word processing mutually. The results support the hierarchical representation of semantic features of emotion words from L1 to L2 in the unbalanced bilingual mental lexicon, while affective attributes are spread across a distributed network.

Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in recognizing and verbalizing emotions and the utilization of a cognitive style that is oriented toward external events, rather than intrapsychic experiences. Alexithymia is considered a vulnerability factor influencing onset and course of many psychiatric disorders. Even though emotions are, in general, elicited involuntarily and emerge without conscious effort, it is surprising that little attention in etiological considerations concerning alexithymia has been given to deficits in automatic emotion processing and their neurobiological bases. In this article, results from studies using behavioral or neurobiological research methods were systematically reviewed in which automatic processing of external emotional information was investigated as a function of alexithymia in healthy individuals. Twenty-two studies were identified through a literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2016. The review reveals deficits in the automatic processing of emotional stimuli in alexithymia at a behavioral and neurobiological level. The vast majority of the reviewed studies examined visual processing. The alexithymia facets externally oriented thinking and difficulties identifying feelings were found to be related to impairments in the automatic processing of threat-related facial expressions. Alexithymic individuals manifest low reactivity to barely visible negative emotional stimuli in brain regions responsible for appraisal, encoding, and affective response, e.g. amygdala, occipitotemporal areas, and insula. Against this background, it appears plausible to assume that deficits in automatic emotion processing could be factors contributing to alexithymic personality characteristics. Directions for future research on alexithymia and automatic emotion perception are suggested.

The influence of subliminal priming (behavior outside of awareness) in humans is an interesting phenomenon and its understanding is crucial as it can impact behavior, choices, and actions. Given this, research about the impact of priming continues to be an area of investigative interest, and this paper provides a technical overview of research design strengths and issues in subliminal priming research. Efficient experiments and protocols, as well as associated electroencephalographic and eye movement data analyses, are discussed in detail. We highlight the strengths and weaknesses of different priming experiments that have measured affective (emotional) and cognitive responses. Finally, very recent approaches and findings are described to summarize and emphasize state-of-the-art methods and potential future directions in research marketing and other commercial applications.

Emojis have become integral to digital communication, yet their impact on downstream cognitive processing is not fully understood. In two lexical decision experiments, we examined the behavioral and electrophysiological effects of emoji primes that varied by emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative) and face-status (face vs. non-face). Experiment 1, where clearly visible primes were presented for 100 ms, revealed a positivity advantage, with positive emojis facilitating responses and modulating both early (P1) and late (LPP) ERP components, along with a response-locked positivity indicating enhanced motor preparation. Negative emojis elicited early (P1, P2) ERP modulations but did not significantly alter behavior. Face emojis also increased early perceptual components (P1, P2/P3a), suggesting that face-like properties capture attention automatically. Experiment 2 employed continuous flash suppression (CFS) to limit conscious prime perception. Under these conditions, positive emojis no longer facilitated responses, and face-status effects disappeared. Negative emojis, however, showed robust early negativities in the ERPs and a trend toward slower response times, consistent with the automatic vigilance account. Overall, the findings indicate that conscious perception is crucial for the positivity advantage of emojis to manifest, whereas negative stimuli can still engage early neural processes and inhibit performance under limited conscious processing.

The cognitive control theory of Botvinick, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 7, 356–366 ( 2007 ) integrates cognitive and affective control processes by emphasizing the aversive nature of cognitive conflict. Using an affective priming paradigm, we replicate earlier results showing that incongruent trials, relative to congruent trials, are indeed perceived as more aversive (Dreisbach & Fischer, Brain and Cognition, 78 (2), 94–98 ( 2012 )). Importantly, however, in two experiments we demonstrate that this effect is reversed following successful responses; correctly responding to incongruent trials engendered relatively more positive affect than correctly responding to congruent trials. The results are discussed in light of a recent computational model by Silvetti, Seurinck, and Verguts, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience , 5:75 ( 2011 ) where it is assumed that outcome expectancies are more negative for incongruent trials than congruent trials. Consequently, the intrinsic reward (prediction error) following successful completion is larger for incongruent than congruent trials. These findings divulge a novel perspective on 'cognitive' adaptations to conflict.

The negative affective priming (NAP) task is a behavioral measure of inhibition of emotional stimuli. Previous studies using the NAP task have found that individuals with depression show reduced inhibition of negative stimuli, suggesting that inhibition biases may play a role in the etiology and maintenance of depression. However, the psychometric properties of the NAP task have not been evaluated or reported. In the present study, we report data on the association between NAP task performance and depression symptoms in three independent samples, and we evaluate the internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the NAP effect indices. The NAP effect for both negative and positive target words had poor internal consistency in all three samples, as well as poor 2-week (Study 2 ) and 6-month (Study 3 ) test–retest reliability. The internal consistency and test–retest reliability of response times (RT) for the individual trial types were moderate to high, as were the intercorrelations between trial types. This pattern of results indicates that overall RT is reliable but variance in RTs for the different trial types in the NAP task is indistinguishable from variance in overall RT. Depression symptom severity was not associated with the NAP effect for negative or positive target words in any of the samples, which could be due to the poor reliability of the NAP effect. Based on these findings, we do not recommend that researchers use the NAP task as a measure of individual differences in the inhibition of emotional stimuli.

Although studies have investigated the influence of the emotionality of primes on the cross-modal affective priming effect, it is unclear whether this effect is due to the contribution of the arousal or the valence of primes. We explored how the valence and arousal of primes influenced the cross-modal affective priming effect. In Experiment 1 we manipulated the valence of primes (positive and negative) that were matched by arousal. In Experiments 2 and 3 we manipulated the arousal of primes under the conditions of positive and negative valence, respectively. Affective words were used as auditory primes and affective faces were used as visual targets in a priming task. The results suggest that the valence of primes modulated the cross-modal affective priming effect but that the arousal of primes did not influence the priming effect. Only when the priming stimuli were positive did the cross-modal affective priming effect occur, but negative primes did not produce a priming effect. In addition, for positive but not negative primes, the arousal of primes facilitated the processing of subsequent targets. Our findings have great significance for understanding the interaction of different modal affective information.