Parts outweigh the whole (word) in unconscious analysis of meaning

In unconscious semantic priming, an unidentifiable visually masked word (th e prime) facilitates semantic classification of a following visible related word (the target). Three experiments reported here provide evidence that m asked primes are analyzed mainly at the level of word parts, not whole-word meaning. In Experiment I, masked nonword primes composed of subword fragme nts of earlier-viewed targets functioned as effective evaluative primes. (F or example, after repeated classification of the targets angel and warm, th e nonword anrm acted as an evaluatively positive masked prime.) Experiment 2 showed that this part-word processing was potent enough to oppose analysi s at the whole-word level. Thus, smile functioned as an evaluatively negati ve (!) masked prime after repeated classification of smut and bile. Experim ent 3 found no priming when masked word primes contained no parts of earlie r targets. These results suggest that robust unconscious priming (a) is dri ven by analysis of part-word information and (b) requires previous classifi cation of visible targets that contain the fragments Inter serving as prime s. Contrary to a widely held view, analysis of subliminal primes appears no t to function at the level of analysis of complete words.