P-20　Affective Priming as an Indirect Measure of Sense of Warmth of Furniture Design

Abstract

“Warmth” is one of the key concepts of interior design involved in choosing living room furniture. Using an affective priming paradigm, the present study investigated whether participants truly feel the warmth of furniture when they view it. In the experiment, prime pictures of a dining table with warm, cold, or neutral impressions were briefly presented, followed by target words with happy or sad meanings. Participants reported whether the target word was happy or sad. Results showed that participants judged happy target words faster when the primes were tables with warm impressions than when they were neutral ones. This finding suggests that the mere existence of a warm table modulated the subsequent processing of valenced words, which implies that affective priming is applicable as an indirect measure of impressions of furniture design.