ATTITUDES TO THE RIGHT - EVALUATIVE PROCESSING IS ASSOCIATED WITH LATERALIZED LATE POSITIVE EVENT-RELATED BRAIN POTENTIALS

The authors recently developed a paradigm to investigate the evaluativ e categorization stage of attitudes using event-related brain potentia ls (ERPs). The present series of studies extended this approach by ana lyzing the spatial topography of the ERP over the lateral scalp region to address complementary questions regarding the nature of operations underlying the evaluative categorization stage of attitude processing . Consistent with the hypothesis that evaluative categorizations engag e mechanisms associated with hedonic or global language processing, re sults revealed that the standardized amplitudes of the late positive p otential of the ERP during evaluative categorizations were larger over the right than the left scalp region, whereas nonevaluative categoriz ations were associated with a symmetrically distributed ERP across the left and right scalp regions.