Rose-colored priming effects: Life satisfaction and affective priming

Abstract

The authors hypothesized that individual differences in life satisfaction would be systematically related to memory networks favoring positive to negative affective priming. To examine this prediction, three studies involving a total of 198 undergraduate participants were conducted. Four tasks were used in the three studies, and each task was fairly distinct in nature. In all tasks, positive and negative affective priming effects were calculated by examining facilitation in relation to consecutive positive stimuli (i.e., a positive priming effect) vs. consecutive negative stimuli (i.e., a negative priming effect). In all studies, life satisfaction interacted with the relative magnitude of positive and negative priming effects, such that higher levels of life satisfaction were associated with a larger positive priming effect and a smaller negative priming effect. The studies significantly extend the view that there is an intimate relationship between life satisfaction and the mental organization of positive vs. negative concepts in memory.

Keywords:

• Life satisfaction
• affect, priming
• reaction time
• evaluation
• categorization
• perception

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge support from NIMH (MH 068241).

Notes

Notes

1. Readers can contact the first author for a list of stimuli.

2. Readers can contact the first author for a list of stimuli.

3. An analysis of priming effects on accuracy rates revealed that there was a similar Life Satisfaction × Priming Effect interaction, F(1, 49) = 5.09, p < 0.05. Participants low in life satisfaction were more accurate in their categorization of negative targets following negative (M = 92.34%) relative to positive (M = 92.22%) primes and less accurate in their categorization of positive targets following positive (M = 90.46%) relative to negative (M = 91.94%) primes. By contrast, participants high in life satisfaction were more accurate in their categorization of positive targets following positive (M = 92.22%) relative to negative (M = 91.63%) primes, but less accurate in their categorization of negative targets following negative (M = 91.39%) relative to positive (M = 91.94%) primes. Thus, the accuracy and latency data converged on the similar point that individuals low in life satisfaction had more pronounced negative priming effects, whereas individuals high in life satisfaction had more pronounced positive priming effects.

4. Readers can contact the first author for a list of stimuli.

5. Accuracy rates were very high (M = 97.43%). There were no effects for life satisfaction, positive or negative priming effects, or interactions in the prediction of accuracy rates, ps > 0.05.

6. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.