Where Danger Lies: The Spatial Priming of Negative Affect

Abstract

Conditioning research has found that organisms associate negative affect with the location of a previous negative experience. This investigation sought to determine whether spatial factors would also influence priming effects pertaining to evaluative judgments. The authors hypothesized that negative affective primes should bias subsequent evaluations to a greater degree when targets are presented at the same location. Accordingly, participants rated a series of negative and neutral words appearing in either a left or right location on a computer screen. Across 3 studies, targets were evaluated more negatively when they occurred in the same location as a negative prime. Overall, the results are novel in linking spatial and social cognitive factors in the priming of negative affect.

Notes

¹Aggressive words were abandon, abduct, aggravate, antagonize, argue, assault, attack, betray, blackmail, bribe, choke, deceive, degrade, demean, harm, harass, hit, hurt, injure, kick, kill, lie, maim, maul, molest, murder, mutilate, oppress, persecute, provoke, pummel, punch, rape, rob, sabotage, shoot, shove, slander, slash, smash, stab, steal, strike, suffocate, terrify, terrorize, threaten, torment, torture, and vandalize.

Neutral control words were acknowledge, address, answer, ask, assign, call, clarify, comment, conduct, confer, consult, contact, converse, convey, convince, declare, delegate, disclose, emphasize, explain, express, inform, initiate, interact, interview, introduce, lecture, manage, notice, notify, observe, oversee, persuade, proclaim, propose, recite, recommend, reiterate, repeat, reply, respond, sell, show, speak, suggest, supervise, talk, tell, watch, and write.

²This design feature (i.e., requiring a spacebar press before a response) has been used in other studies (e.g., Robinson & Clore, 2002) to separate the time needed for the cognitive processes involved in an evaluation from the time needed for more mundane processes related to finding the appropriate key. It was included in this study to allow examination of reaction time. However, these analyses were not particularly enlightening and were therefore excluded from this article.