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

Bibliographic Data

ID21504841
AuthorsRebecca Weil (0000-0002-3725-7948, University of Hull), Georg Manheimer (corresponding author), Tomás A Palma (0000-0003-2936-4732, CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal), Bertram Gawronski (0000-0001-7938-3339, The University of Texas at Austin)
Year2021
Volume35
Issue4
Pages636-648
Publication date2021-05-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCognition & Emotion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-9931 • E-ISSN: 1464-0600
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02699931.2020.1858029
OpenAlexW33300422
LanguageEN
References cited46

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

Art · Humanities · French Literature and Criticism · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · Philosophy

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