Abstract
From classic theory and research in psychology, we distill a broad
theoretical statement that evaluative responding can be immediate,
unintentional, implicit, stimulus based, and linked directly to approach
and avoidance motives. This statement suggests that evaluative responses
should be elicited by novel, nonrepresentational stimuli (e.g., abstract
art, "foreign" words). We tested this hypothesis through combining
the best features of relevant automatic-affect research paradigms.
We first obtained explicit evaluative ratings of novel stimuli. From
these, we selected normatively positive and negative stimuli to use
as primes in a sequential priming paradigm. Two experiments using
this paradigm demonstrated that briefly presented novel prime stimuli
were evaluated automatically, as they facilitated responses to subsequently
presented target stimuli of the same valence just as much as did
pictures or names of real objects. A final experiment revealed that
exposure to novel stimuli produces muscular predispositions to approach
or avoid them.
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