2025 Volume 22 Issue 2 Pages 97-103
This study investigates whether typeface influences affective judgments of words consisting of two kanji. Japanese words with either positive or negative meanings were presented in either rounded or spiky fonts. Participants （ N=92） were asked to rapidly and accurately judge the valence of the words. Participants also rated their impressions of the fonts with the semantic differential （SD） method. The results indicate participants judged more positive valences for the rounded font than the spiky font and that the median reaction time was shorter when word valence and font valence were congruent than when incongruent. The congruency effect was larger for rounded fonts than for spiky fonts. These findings suggest that typefaces can influence the valence judgments of word meanings, even when typeface is task-irrelevant.
