Schmitz, M. & Wentura, D.
Saarland University
A long-standing debate in the field of cognition and emotion deals with the question of how evaluative connotations are represented in semantic memory. For this purpose, evaluative priming (i.e., processing valent targets following either valence-congruent primes or incongruent primes) with non-evaluative tasks (e.g., semantic categorization task) was considered a useful paradigm. However, published results are still inconsistent: congruence effects, null results, and even incongruence effects were found. We put forward the assumption that congruence effects may be traced back to the target-encoding facilitation by a valence-congruent prime, whereas incongruence effects may be attributed to the prime-activation maintenance by a valence-congruent target and a subsequent increase of response conflicts. To test this assumption, we used the semantic categorization task (person vs. animal) and a negative stimulus-onset asynchrony between prime and target to minimize target-encoding facilitation and to maximize prime-maintenance. As expected, response priming effects (i.e., faster responses if prime and target are response compatible compared to incompatible) were only found given valence-congruence of prime and target thereby indicating that only evaluatively congruent primes are activated sufficiently to interfere with the target response. ERP correlates (N2, lateralized readiness potential) corroborate the behavioral findings. Implications for the representation of evaluation are discussed.