EMOTION CONGRUENCE IN PERCEPTION

Previous tests of emotion congruence in perception have failed to find that stimulus events in the visual field that match an individual's e motional state are perceived more efficiently than other stimuli. The present research examined unidimensional (valence) congruence and mult idimensional (categorical) emotion congruence in perception. The forme r hypothesis, which has guided most past work on this problem, holds t hat stimuli that match the valence of the perceiver's emotional state will be perceived more efficiently than other stimuli. The latter hypo thesis states that stimuli that match the perceiver's emotional state in a more specific way will be perceived more efficiently than other s timuli. In two experiments, subjects were induced to feel happy or sad and then performed a lexical decision task. In both experiments, emot ions facilitated lexical decision about words specifically related to subjects' emotional states. Effects of emotion on perception of valenc e-congruent stimuli were not observed.