Affective Priming Using Facial Expressions Modulates Liking for Abstract Art

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Abstract

We examined the influence of affective priming on the appreciation of abstract artworks using an evaluative priming task. Facial primes (showing happiness, disgust or no emotion) were presented under brief (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA = 20ms) and extended (SOA = 300ms) conditions. Differences in aesthetic liking for abstract paintings depending on the emotion expressed in the preceding primes provided a measure of the priming effect. The results showed that, for the extended SOA, artworks were liked more when preceded by happiness primes and less when preceded by disgust primes. Facial expressions of happiness, though not of disgust, exerted similar effects in the brief SOA condition. Subjective measures and a forced-choice task revealed no evidence of prime awareness in the suboptimal condition. Our results are congruent with findings showing that the affective transfer elicited by priming biases evaluative judgments, extending previous research to the domain of aesthetic appreciation.

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Most cited references 11

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On the automatic activation of attitudes.

R. Fazio, D M Sanbonmatsu, M. C. Powell … (1986)

We hypothesized that attitudes characterized by a strong association between the attitude object and an evaluation of that object are capable of being activated from memory automatically upon mere presentation of the attitude object. We used a priming procedure to examine the extent to which the mere presentation of an attitude object would facilitate the latency with which subjects could indicate whether a subsequently presented target adjective had a positive or a negative connotation. Across three experiments, facilitation was observed on trials involving evaluatively congruent primes (attitude objects) and targets, provided that the attitude object possessed a strong evaluative association. In Experiments 1 and 2, preexperimentally strong and weak associations were identified via a measurement procedure. In Experiment 3, the strength of the object-evaluation association was manipulated. The results indicated that attitudes can be automatically activated and that the strength of the object-evaluation association determines the likelihood of such automatic activation. The implications of these findings for a variety of issues regarding attitudes--including their functional value, stability, effects on later behavior, and measurement--are discussed.

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Affect, cognition, and awareness: affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures.

Sheila T Murphy, R Zajonc (1993)

The affective primacy hypothesis (R. B. Zajonc, 1980) asserts that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing. The present work tested this hypothesis by comparing the effects of affective and cognitive priming under extremely brief (suboptimal) and longer (optimal) exposure durations. At suboptimal exposures only affective primes produced significant shifts in Ss' judgments of novel stimuli. These results suggest that when affect is elicited outside of conscious awareness, it is diffuse and nonspecific, and its origin and address are not accessible. Having minimal cognitive participation, such gross and nonspecific affective reactions can therefore be diffused or displaced onto unrelated stimuli. At optimal exposures this pattern of results was reversed such that only cognitive primes produced significant shifts in judgments. Together, these results support the affective primacy hypothesis.

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An inkblot for attitudes: affect misattribution as implicit measurement.

B. Keith Payne, Clara Michelle Cheng, Olesya Govorun … (2005)

Misattributions people make about their own affective reactions can be used to measure attitudes implicitly. Combining the logic of projective tests with advances in priming research, the affect misattribution procedure (AMP) was sensitive to normatively favorable and unfavorable evaluations (Experiments 1-4), and the misattribution effect was strong at both fast and slow presentation rates (Experiments 3 and 4). Providing further evidence of validity, the AMP was strongly related to individual differences in self-reported political attitudes and voting intentions (Experiment 5). In the socially sensitive domain of racial attitudes, the AMP showed in-group bias for Black and White participants. AMP performance correlated with explicit racial attitudes, a relationship that was moderated by motivations to control prejudice (Experiment 6). Across studies, the task was unaffected by direct warnings to avoid bias. Advantages of the AMP include large effect sizes, high reliability, ease of use, and resistance to correction attempts.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Luis M Martinez: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date Collection: 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 19 November 2013

Volume: 8

Issue: 11

Electronic Location Identifier: e80154

Affiliations

[1 ]Human Evolution and Cognition Group, Associated group to IFISC (University of the Balearic Islands-CSIC), Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

[2 ]Department of Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

[3 ]Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

CSIC-Univ Miguel Hernandez, Spain

Author notes

* E-mail: albert.flexas@ 123456uib.eu

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: JR AF JFC MN AO EM. Performed the experiments: AF JFC AO. Analyzed the data: JR AF JFC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AF JR. Wrote the manuscript: AF JR MN EM.

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-13-19631

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080154

PMC ID: 3833895

PubMed ID: 24260350

SO-VID: e2be4b26-2036-419f-ab10-18436fcdafba

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 10 May 2013

Date accepted : 30 September 2013

Funding

This study was funded by research grant FFI2010-20759 from the Spanish Government Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad ( http://www.mineco.gob.es). Albert Flexas and Julia F. Christensen were supported by the grants AP2008/02284 and AP2009-2889 from Ministerio de Educación (Spanish Government - http://www.mecd.gob.es), respectively. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Affective Priming Using Facial Expressions Modulates Liking for Abstract Art

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Most cited references 11

On the automatic activation of attitudes.

Affect, cognition, and awareness: affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures.

An inkblot for attitudes: affect misattribution as implicit measurement.

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