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Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond and Hymes (1996) showed that participants need less time to name a target word if that target word is preceded by a prime word with the same valence compared to when that target word is preceded by a prime word with a different valence. However, recent studies raise serious doubts about the robustness and the reliability of the affective priming effect in the word-word naming task. We report three affective priming studies in which the modality of the primes and the targets was manipulated (words vs. pictures). Results show that replicable affective priming of naming responses can be obtained when pictures are used as primes but not when words are used as primes. These findings are interpreted in light of the hypothesis that the primes influence the identity encoding of the targets.
Since Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) demonstrated that participants need less time to evaluate a target stimulus if that target is preceded by a prime stimulus with the same valence compared to when the target stimulus is preceded by a prime stimulus with a different valence, the affective priming task has become the preferred tool to investigate the conditions under which attitudes can be activated. Using the affective priming effect as an index of attitude activation, affective priming studies have provided strong evidence for the claim that automatic stimulus evaluation is a fast-acting process (e.g., Fazio et al., 1986; Hermans, De Houwer, & Eelen, 1994; Hermans, De Houwer, & Eelen, 2001; Klauer, Ro[nagel, & Musch, 1997) that does not depend on the conscious identification of the attitude objects (e.g., Draine & Greenwald, 1998; Greenwald, Klinger, & Liu, 1989; Greenwald, Klinger, & Schuh, 1995), nor on the presence of ample processing resources (e.g., Hermans, Crombez, & Eelen, 2000) or the presence of an explicit evaluative goal (e.g., Bargh et al., 1996; Hermans et al., 1994). Hence, the general conclusion of this research is that the process underlying attitude activation is unconditional and automatic in the sense that it is efficient and can occur independently of the presence of an evaluative intention and independently of awareness of the instigating stimulus.
However, despite the fact that affective priming research has provided considerable insight into the nature of the stimuli that are...