ERP studies on the effects of depth of prime processing on evaluative priming of aesthetical preference judgments

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The evaluative priming effect (EPE) refers to changes in the evaluation of (typically neutral) target stimuli that are preceded by positive or negative prime stimuli. An assimilative EPE describes a pattern of more positive judgments after positive primes and more negative judgments after negative primes, compared to neutrally-primed targets. Occasionally, a contrastive EPE has been observed as well, involving more positive judgments after negative primes, and vice versa. The assimilative EPE, or assimilative sub-processes of the EPE, have been explained in terms of either misattribution of the prime affect to the target (Payne, Cheng, Govorun & Stewart, 2005), or response priming (Rotteveel & Phaf, 2004), that is, prime-induced automatic response activation. Conscious counter-control (Strack, Schwarz, Bless, Kübler, & Wänke, 1993) can explain a contrastive EPE, or contrastive sub-processes: Participants who see through the priming procedure might correct their spontaneous judgment of the target contrary to the valence of the prime before it is entered. All these mechanisms can explain an important finding, namely stronger assimilative priming from suboptimal primes that are presented at short durations and/or embedded in a mask, compared to clearly visible optimal primes. However, behavioral studies alone cannot unequivocally clarify how exactly the inverse relationship between depth of prime processing and strength of the EPE is mediated. Furthermore, previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) only found a post-hoc relationship between the size of the individual EPE and ERP indices of depth of prime processing. Therefore, the present program includes four converging ERP studies on the EPE that involve a representative set of specific experimental manipulations of the depth of prime processing to simultaneously analyze the effects on the EPE, on prime ERPs, on markers of affect misattribution in the target ERP, on markers of response activation in the prime lateralized readiness potential (LRP), and on markers of conscious counter-control in the target LRP. Based on the obtained findings, we will be able to provide new evidence in favor of a novel integrative theory of the EPE, thus allowing for better predictions of the size and polarity of the EPE in specific affective and information-processing contexts. This would increase our knowledge about affective context effects on evaluative judgment, a task whose importance has been emphasized by Schwarz (2007). The intended experimental manipulations of the depth of prime processing are representative of typical every-day influences on the processing of affective cues. To this end, working memory is loaded in a prime-specific manner, primes are presented as distractors in a primary task, and specific instructions regarding how to deal with the primes (ignore, vs. attend-and-correct) are applied.