Context dependency of automatic evaluation for the conditioned attitude object

Abstract

An experiment (N=32) examined whether an affectively neutral attitude object which always accompanied an affectively positive stimulus in a specific context was automatically evaluated as positive only in that same context. In the acquisition phase, one nonsense shape with a colored background context was paired with positive personality traits. In the alternative condition, the non-sense shape was presented with no background color context and was not paired with any stimulus. In the test phase, the affective priming method used that shape as the prime stimulus. Response latencies for positive target words preceded by the shape with the colored background context as the prime stimulus were shorter than those preceded by the shape with no background context. This result shows that automatic evaluation for an attitude-conditioned object depends on the context that was presented in the acquisition phase.