Effects of priming a bipolar attribute concept on dimension versus concept-specific accessibility of semantic memory

In Experiment 1, participants received behavioral information about a perso n that could be interpreted as either honest or unkind. Priming a concept a long 1 dimension (e.g., honesty) increased the likelihood of spontaneously describing the target along this dimension (i.e., as honest), regardless of whether the primed concept was directly applicable for interpreting the ta rget's behavior ("honest") or was its bipolar opposite ("dishonest"). Exper iment 2 replicated this finding in a different, product domain. It further demonstrated that when information is ambiguous, primed concepts can influe nce not only the dimension along which the target is described but also the value it is assigned along this dimension. The effect of priming in both e xperiments was reflected in participants' overall evaluations of the target s as well as in their spontaneous descriptions of it. Results were consiste nt with the assumption that bipolar attributes are associatively linked in memory but are stored as separate concepts rather than as values along a bi polar continuum.