Bright on the right feels right: SQUARC compatibility is hedonically marked

ABSTRACT

According to the Spatial Quantity Association of Response Codes (SQUARC), people hold a mental association between horizontal position and quantity (lower quantities left, higher quantities right). While a large body of research has explored this effect for response speed and judgment accuracy, the affective downstream consequences of the SQUARC remain unexplored. Aiming to address this gap, the present two experiments (pre-registered, total N = 521) investigated whether stimulus arrangements that are compatible with the SQUARC for luminance are affectively preferred to stimulus arrangements that are incompatible. SQUARC-compatible square arrangements (dark-left, bright-right) were preferred over SQUARC-incompatible square arrangements (dark-right, bright-left). The preference for SQUARC compatibility was not moderated by the horizontal orientation of the response scale. Our results confirm the direction of the spatial-luminance association and provide initial support that the cognitive processing of SQUARC compatibility is hedonically marked and appears sufficient to impact affective evaluations.

KEYWORDS:

• SQUARC
• continuous magnitudes
• mental quantity line
• spatial-luminance association
• fluency

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Unit FOR 2150: Relativity in Social Cognition: Antecedents and Consequences of Comparative Thinking under Grant 246329797.

Data availability statement

All data, analysis scripts, and materials are available at https://osf.io/6bsq4.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Unit FOR 2150: Relativity in Social Cognition: Antecedents and Consequences of Comparative Thinking under Grant 246329797. We have no conflict of interest to disclose. For materials, data, and analysis scripts please see: https://osf.io/6bsq4.