Contextual positivity-familiarity effects are unaffected by known moderators of misattribution

Weil, Rebecca; Palma, Tomás A.; Gawronski, Bertram

Abstract

The positivity-familiarity effect refers to the phenomenon that positive affect increases the likelihood that people judge a stimulus as familiar. Drawing on the assumption that positivity-familiarity effects result from a common misattribution mechanism that is shared with conceptually similar effects (e.g. fluency-familiarity effects), we investigated whether positivity-familiarity effects are qualified by three known moderators of other misattribution phenomena: (a) conceptual similarity between affect-eliciting prime stimuli and focal target stimuli, (b) relative salience of affect-eliciting prime stimuli, and (c) explicit warnings about the effects of affect-eliciting prime stimuli on familiarity judgments of the targets. Counter to predictions, three experiments obtained robust positivity-familiarity effects that were unaffected by the hypothesised moderators. The findings pose a challenge for misattribution accounts of positivity-familiarity effects, but they are consistent with alternative accounts in terms of affective monitoring.

Citation

Weil, R., Palma, T. A., & Gawronski, B. (in press). Contextual positivity-familiarity effects are unaffected by known moderators of misattribution. Cognition and Emotion, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1858029

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 26, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 10, 2020
• Deposit Date: Dec 12, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 11, 2021
• Journal: Cognition and Emotion
• Print ISSN: 0269-9931
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-13
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1858029
• Keywords: Affect; Familiarity; Fluency; Misattribution; Priming
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3674257
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699931.2020.1858029?journalCode=pcem20