A time course analysis of the affective priming effect

The argument that automatic processes are responsible for affective/evaluat ive priming effects has been primarily based on studies that have manipulat ed the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; i.e., the interval between the onset of the prime and the onset of the target). Moreover, these SOA studies pro vide an insight in the time course of the activation processes underlying a utomatic affect/attitude activation. Based on a fine-grained manipulation o f the SOA employing either the evaluative decision task (Experiment 1) and the pronunciation task (Experiment 2) we concluded that affective priming, and hence automatic affect activation, is based on fast-acting automatic pr ocesses. The results of Experiment 3 provide a valid explanation for an app arent discrepancy between the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and previous f indings. Finally, the results of Experiment 3 support the prediction of Jar vis and Petty (1996) that affective priming effects should be stronger for participants who are more chronically engaged in conscious evaluations.