Direction of so-called affective priming effects in the evaluation task: Evidence for automatic vigilance for negative information

The mechanisms that underlie the phenomenon of automatic affective priming have not been clarified hitherto. Predictions about direction of affective priming effects derived from the most prominent explanation for affective p riming, i.e. the automatic spreading activation account, are in conflict wi th those of the automatic vigilance hypothesis which is based on findings i n the emotional Stroop task. A sequential priming task (word evaluation) wa s administered to 66 normal subjects. No interaction between prime valence and target valence was observed but a main effect prime valence was found. Only an interference effect based on negative prime words could be establis hed. Our findings are not consistent with the predictions derived from the automatic spreading activation account or the pathway facilitation/interfer ence model. Instead, there are parallels with the emotional Stroop effect. It appears that negative but not positive prime words have an attention-gra bbing power and in case of situationally first encounters delay subsequent processing of information.