Deconstructing Marilyn: Robust effects of face contexts on stimulus-response compatibility

Hommel and Lippa (1995) found a left-right spatial compatibility effect wit h respect to a background context of Marilyn Monroe's face, rotated 90 degr ees clockwise or counterclockwise from upright, when subjects responded to up or down stimuli by pressing a left or a right key. They interpreted thei r results as providing evidence for object-based coding of stimulus locatio n. We conducted four experiments in order to evaluate the reliability of th is face context effect, to control for possible artifacts and evaluate alte rnative explanations, and to establish generalizability to other face conte xts. This was accomplished by using not only the original photograph, but a lso a mirror-reversed image, chimeric faces composed from the left or the r ight sides of the original photograph, an outline drawing face, and a circl e with markings for facial features. Our results were much stronger than th ose of Hommel and Lippa, and the face context effect was found for all of t he face variations. Our experiments also provided evidence to suggest that asymmetric coding of the up and down locations contributes to performance i n the face context as well.