Asymmetries in the processing of emotionally valenced words

Earlier research has shown a valence dependent encoding asymmetry of emotional words (e.g., Pratto & John, 1991; White, 1996; Stenberg, Wiking & Dahl, 1998). To further study this asymmetry, two word detection experiments were performed based on the following hypothesis: when there is a more...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scandinavian journal of psychology 2001-04, Vol.42 (2), p.97-104
Main Author: Dahl, Mats
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
affect
Analysis of Variance
emotional words
Emotions
Encoding asymmetry
Female
Humans
Male
mobilization-minimization hypothesis
Models, Psychological
Psycholinguistics
Reaction Time
Reading
Semantics
Sweden
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Summary:Earlier research has shown a valence dependent encoding asymmetry of emotional words (e.g., Pratto & John, 1991; White, 1996; Stenberg, Wiking & Dahl, 1998). To further study this asymmetry, two word detection experiments were performed based on the following hypothesis: when there is a more thoroughly processing of the valence, in this case a valence categorisation, there will be, in a subsequent task, prolonged latencies for negative words, compared to positive words. The result gave significantly prolonged response latencies for negative words compared to positive ones in the subsequent detection task when using an affective orienting task, something not found using a non‐affective orienting task. The results support the Mobilization‐Minimization hypothesis (Taylor, 1991), according to which negative events and stimuli occupy more cognitive resources, but with some limitation: the affective asymmetry, with prolonged latencies for negative words, occurs only when there is a deepened encoding of the affective component of the words.
ISSN:0036-5564
1467-9450
DOI:10.1111/1467-9450.00218