Host: The Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology
The directionality of verbal probabilities (verbal terms conveying probabilistic information) is supposed to affect decision making independent from the subjective probability interpretations. At the same time, it may evoke emotions, especially intuitive feelings, which have an effect on people’s decisions. However, little is known about the relation between verbal probabilities and emotions, let alone the mechanisms under their influence on decision making. The present study investigated the implicit association between verbal probabilities (positive or negative) and emotional valance (good or bad) using the Implicit Associated Test (IAT). The results show that positive expressions were more associated with positive emotional valance than negative expressions were, suggesting that the effect of directionality of verbal probabilities may be mediated by emotional valance.
