Intensifying the dominant response - Participant-observer differences and nonconscious effects

Two studies examined the effects of initial nonconscious affective response s on subsequent evaluations made by conversational participants and observe rs. Participants either first engaged in a subliminal priming task to induc e a positive or negative affective response toward a confederate or were in a control (no priming) condition. After the priming task, participants eit her engaged in an interaction with the confederate or watched the interacti on on videotape and then evaluated the confederate The confederate used an uninvolved interaction style in Study 1 (N = 240) and a more involved style in Study 2 (N = 180). Results for conversational participants suggest that the nonconscious negative prime made the involved interaction seem more po sitive and the uninvolved interaction seem more negative. As predicted, res ults were stronger for participants than for observers and were stronger fo r negative rather than positive nonconscious affect.