On the automatic activation of associated evaluations: An overview

A review of the literature concerning the phenomenon known as automatic att itude activation is presented. The robustness of the affective priming effe ct across many different procedural variations, the mediating mechanisms th ought to underlie the effect, and the moderating role of associative streng th are discussed. The relevance and importance of automatic attitude activa tion to many fundamental cognitive and social processes also is highlighted . Finally, an overview of the articles included in this Special Issue of Co gnition and Emotion, their essential contributions, and their relation to t he earlier literature is presented.