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Swiss Journal of Psychology, 69 (4), 2010, 213–219
I. Skand
SwissJ.
rani-Marzouki
Psychol. 69 &
(4)Y.
© 2010
Marzouki:
VerlagEmotion
Hans Huber,
and Hogrefe
DecisionAG,
Making
Bern
Original Communication
Subliminal Emotional Priming and
Decision Making in a Simulated
Hiring Situation
Inès Skandrani-Marzouki1 and Yousri Marzouki2
1
Université d’Aix-Marseille I, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale, France
Université d’Aix-Marseille I & Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS, France
2
Abstract. The present study examines the unconscious influence of emotional information on decision making in a simulated hiring
situation. We used a subliminal masked priming paradigm with varying faces as primes, which were presented for a duration of 50 ms
and had two levels of emotion: positive emotion (happiness) and negative emotion (anger). These primes were followed by emotionally
neutral target faces. Primes were congruent (same faces) or incongruent (different faces). Prime Emotion (positive vs. negative) was
crossed with Prime Repetition (repeat vs. unrelated) in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Each participant was tested in all four of the experimental
conditions, each of which had 5 different trials. The participants were asked to indicate as rapidly as possible whether they were “favorable” or “unfavorable” toward the selection of the candidate (target face). Two dependent measures were analyzed: number of target faces
chosen (i.e., number of “favorable” responses to target faces) and reaction time (RT). Results revealed a strong effect of emotional priming.
Participants tended to choose more target faces preceded by positive prime faces than by negative prime faces. Moreover, they reacted
faster when presented with target faces preceded by negative primes. Despite its exploratory nature, this study provides further evidence
for the role of emotional processing in modulating decision processes and extends the experimental manipulation of subliminal emotion
to the case of the masked repetition priming technique.
Keywords: subliminal priming, emotion, decision making
Introduction
Since Murphy and Zajonc’s (1993) seminal study it has
been known that affective primes have a very fast effect on
our behavior. Many subsequent studies have shown such
influences in various ways, including having participants
judge the affect of an ambiguous expression of target faces
(Li, Zinbarg, Boehm, & Paller, 2008), judge the validity of
advertising messages (Channouf, 2000), and inducing
emotional priming with word stimuli of varying emotional
valence (e.g., Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982; Fazio, 2001;
Gibbons, 2009). In the present study, we further demonstrate that subliminal emotional information can be a useful, indirect source of information for optimizing the decision process.
A perpetually thorny problem in the social and psychological sciences is the fuzziness in defining what emotion
actually is. It is generally assumed that emotion is basically
a component process (Scherer, 2005). This recent approach
provides a direct link between each emotion component
and its associated function as follows: the cognitive component is responsible for the evaluation of objects and
events; the neurophysiological component determines the
DOI 10.1024/1421-0185/a000025
system regulation; the motivational component affords
preparation for action and execution of actions; the motor
expression component defines behavioral intentions and
communication; and the subjective feeling component represents the monitoring of the interactions between internal
and external states of the organism.
Moreover, three dimensions frequently emerge to explain this concept (see Smith & Lazarus, 1990):
– Emotion as a state: This dimension is very close to Damasio’s (1994) definition of feelings. It entails a significant change in a body’s state (i.e., organism) caused by
the real presence of “external agents” responsible for the
physiological reactions of the body and also for “internal
variations” where the causes can be simply representations and mental states.
– Emotion as a process: This dimension is rooted in the
notion of action associated with the “source cause” of
the emotional reaction, where the organism builds up
strategies by taking into consideration contextual constraints (e.g., Russell, 2003).
– Emotion as a source of knowledge: It is obvious that
when we picture or imagine fictional events, we experience deep emotional reactions that allow the body to
Swiss J. Psychol. 69 (4) © 2010 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
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I. Skandrani-Marzouki & Y. Marzouki: Emotion and Decision Making
acquire expectations about the way these reactions vary
when facing unknown events. Ultimately, the body establishes an elaborate knowledge structure about the
emotional quality of our behavior (see also Russell,
2003).
Cognitive approaches consider emotion, for the most part,
to be an indirect source of knowledge. The use of affect1 as
information involves both identification of the affective reactions and the determination of the relevance of these reactions for a given judgment. The affect-as-information
model (see Clore, Gasper, & Garvin, 2001; Schwarz & Clore, 1983, 1988, 1996) is a good candidate for providing a
framework for a cognitive approach to understanding the
unconscious influence of emotion on behavior. Indeed, this
model is based upon the assumption that emotional processes occur without conscious awareness. Hence, affective feelings allow us to explicitly learn about our own implicit judgments and decisions.
Three levels of behavioral analysis of emotional information can be discussed when we refer to the cognitive
models of emotion:
1) level of cognitive structures, which refers to different
forms of organization of emotional information;
2) level of cognitive strategies, which is mostly involved in
problem-solving situations (e.g., Forgas, 1991; Schwarz
& Clore, 1983, 1988);
3) level of cognitive “propositions,” which refers to semantic contents (e.g., Bower, 1981).
In the absence of conscious awareness, the content of emotional stimuli can influence human decision making (Bargh
& Pietromonaco, 1982; Greenwald, Klinger, & Liu, 1989).
One way to test this assumption is to use the masked repetition priming paradigm, which has become a dominant
tool in the investigation of early cognitive and emotional
processes (Bargh, 1998; Dixon, 1971, 1981; Forster & Davis, 1984; Marcel, 1983). In this paradigm, the prime stimulus is preceded by a pattern mask and followed by a target
stimulus that requires a response. Because the prime is presented for a very short duration, participants are typically
not aware of the prime stimulus. In order to assess the size
of priming effects, a comparison is required of the congruent/related condition (with physical similarity between the
prime and the target) with the incongruent/unrelated condition (no relationship between prime and target). The
standard result corresponds to an advantage in favor of the
related condition with faster reaction times (RTs) and a
higher rate of accuracy as compared to the unrelated condition.
Many studies have used this experimental procedure
with various manipulations and typically show that participants are faster to recognize a target word when it is
primed by a semantically related as opposed to a semantically unrelated word (e.g., Marcel, 1983; Pillon, 1993). A
similar result was observed when a subliminal image prime
and a target word shared the same semantic category (e.g.,
Channouf, Canac, & Gosset, 1999). The first demonstration of an implicit affective effect was shown by Clore and
Storbeck (2006) who manipulated participants’ mood, inducing positive or negative mood by presenting participants with sad or happy music prior to the categorization,
judgment, or lexical decision task. Their results revealed
that positive mood significantly facilitated priming effects
relative to negative mood. The same pattern of results was
observed over the three priming tasks and also for different
prime presentations.
Most relevant to our study is subsequent research that
manipulated facial expressions by using the priming technique. Channouf (2000) conducted an experiment in which
participants evaluated advertising messages by pressing
buttons corresponding to “true” or “false” answers. These
messages were primed by faces displaying either positive
or negative emotion. In the condition in which the presentation of facial expression was subliminal, participants responded with more “true” answers to the advertising target
sentences preceded by positive as compared to negative
prime faces. These results were observed only with the
number of true/false answers as a dependent variable,
whereas no significant effect was reported for reaction time
(RT). More recently, Winkielman, Berridge, and Wilbarger
(2005) found that participants exposed to subliminal pictures of happy faces drank more and were willing to pay
more for their beverage than participants exposed to angry
faces.
Pittman and Bornstein (1998) conducted a subliminal
priming experiment aimed at understanding the effect of
gender and social discrimination in a simulated hiring situation. Prior to the experiment, the authors subliminally
presented the participants with a series of pictures of candidates who might aspire to the position. Their results
showed that, in 70% of the cases, the participants chose the
candidates seen beforehand.
Since a very brief presentation of stimuli produced this
mere exposure effect (see Zajonc, 1968), one may ask how
emotions can be a useful indirect source of information.
Because the Pittman and Bornstein (1998) study did not
use an emotion manipulation, in the present experiment we
combined the standard masked priming procedure with a
subliminal manipulation of emotion. We also opted for a
two-alternative forced choice task (2-AFC) to capture the
decision processes in the RT measure. In addition, the present study aimed to provide further support for the subliminal influence of emotion on decision-making processes.
Unlike previous studies, we used the hiring situation as a
scenario and a context in order to enhance the relevance of
the decision made by the participant and to provide a more
1 The use of “affect” as a synonym of “emotion” is very common. We consider affect, as did Schwarz and Clore (1983, 1988, 1996), to be
an instant expression of emotion.
Swiss J. Psychol. 69 (4) © 2010 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
I. Skandrani-Marzouki & Y. Marzouki: Emotion and Decision Making
straightforward evaluation of emotional influence. Finally,
by excluding participants from the final analysis who were
aware of prime presentation, we obtained a more conservative measure of the behavioral effects due to a subliminal
emotional influence at the prime level.
Method
Participants
A total of 65 students (11 males, mean age = 22, SD = 2.4
years) from the Université de Provence volunteered to take
part in the experiment. In the end, only 60 participants were
used in the analyses because of their verbal self-reports in
a brief postexperimental interview (e.g., Chalmers, 1996;
Critchfield, 1993; Geissler, 1990; Merikle, 1992). These 60
participants reported that they were unable to detect or
identify any stimulus prior to the target presentation during
the entire experiment.
Stimuli and Design
In order to obtain the different faces used as stimuli, we
asked another group of 35 student volunteers (M = 24
years, SD = 2.3) to express the required facial expressions
(positive, neutral, and negative) for the experiment. These
students consented to be photographed. A total of 128 pictures of faces were collected, but only 40 were used in the
experiment. The pictures selected illustrated the emotional
expression most saliently. All faces selected were plainlooking, without any particular clue (e.g., eyeglasses, hat,
excessive make-up, etc.) making their perception confusing, difficult, or cued. The facial expressions chosen as
prime faces (positive emotion vs. negative emotion) and
target faces (neutral) were selected based on Kendall’s
method of evaluating the degree of consensus between five
raters. For the ratings, all pictures were presented in sequence on a computer screen and each rater used a Likerttype scale from –2 obviously negative expression to +2:
obviously positive expression to decide which level
matched the given facial expression best. The results
showed highly significant interjudge agreement, W = 0.89,
p = .0001.
In the present study, all target faces were neutral, whereas the prime faces were either positive or negative. A trial
in which the target neutral face was preceded by the same
prime face, whether expressing positive or negative emotion, was considered a related (repeat) trial. The opposite –
an unrelated trial – consisted of a neutral target face primed
by a different face, regardless of facial emotion.
Two factors were manipulated in this experiment: Prime
Emotion (positive vs. negative) and Prime Repetition (repeat vs. unrelated) crossed in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Each
participant was tested in all four experimental conditions,
215
each of which contained five different trials. The entire set
of 20 trials was presented randomly during the experiment.
Two dependent measures were recorded: number of target
faces chosen by participants to continue on in the hiring
process and reaction time (RT).
Procedure
Situation Scenario
The situation scenario consisted in showing the participant
a document summarizing the main steps in a professional
hiring protocol. A report was enclosed in the document
stating that the remaining candidates involved in this important selection have a remarkable education and career
pathway (see Appendix). It also stated that because of the
limited number of positions required for the job, the participant was to choose the candidates most likely (according to the participant) to proceed to the final hiring step.
The experimenter walked the participant through each step
of the document in order to make sure that he or she understood what the task required before moving on to the experiment.
The Experiment
The experiment was run in a sound attenuated and dimly
lit room. The participants were seated in front of a computer screen on which stimuli were displayed on a monitor
with a resolution of 1024 × 768 pixels and a 60-Hz refresh
rate. The experiment was conducted using SuperLab® software. Before the experiment started, participants carefully
read the instructions and performed a practice session of 5
trials that did not appear in the main experiment.
Each trial began with a central fixation point lasting for
300 ms. The fixation point was then replaced by a forward
mask (premask) consisting of a black and white spotted
square, which appeared for 20 ms. The prime face immediately followed the forward mask and lasted for 50 ms,
which, in turn, was replaced by a backward mask (postmask) similar to the premask for 20 ms. The target face
followed the backward mask and remained on the screen
until the participant had made his or her response. The procedure is described in Figure 1.
The participants were asked to indicate as rapidly as possible whether they were “favorable” or “unfavorable” toward the selection of each candidate by pressing a green
response button with their right index finger for a “favorable” answer and a red button with their left index finger
for an “unfavorable” answer. The response hand was counterbalanced across participants. At the end of the experiment, a verbal response to the question, “Just before the
display of faces on the screen, were you able to detect the
very brief appearance of other faces?” was recorded for
every participant.
Swiss J. Psychol. 69 (4) © 2010 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
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I. Skandrani-Marzouki & Y. Marzouki: Emotion and Decision Making
Figure 1. Structure of typical trials. (a)
Example of a trial in the positive emotional priming condition with repetition. (b) Example of a trial in the negative emotional priming condition
without repetition.
Table 1
Mean reaction times (ms) and number of target faces chosen plus or minus standard errors for all experimental conditions
Positive emotion
Prime repeat
Mean number of target faces chosen
Negative emotion
Prime unrelated
3.13
Prime repeat
3.19
2.86
Prime unrelated
2.93
Standard error
± 0.40
± 0.41
± 0.37
± 0.38
Mean RT
1417.52
1473.73
1326.48
1379.61
Standard error
± 183.0
± 190.26
± 171.25
± 178.11
Results
ANOVA Results
Of the 65 participants, 5 were excluded (7.7%) from the main
analysis because they had reported being able to perceive
“blurry images,” “flashes,” or “brief patterns” prior to the
target presentation. Table 1 presents the average RTs and
number of chosen target faces for all 60 participants in the
four experimental conditions. Overall, for both number of
target faces chosen and RTs, repeated measures ANOVAs
and paired t-tests techniques showed that the repetition effect
was not significant. Regarding the number of target faces
chosen, the net repetition priming effect – the difference between Meanunrelated and Meanrepeat – gives only 0.06 units
(1 unit is the equivalent of an average of one target face chosen per participant) in the presence of positive emotion and
only 0.07 units in the presence of negative emotion. For RTs,
this difference was not null, but also not significant, with a
net repetition priming effect of 56 ms for positive emotion
relative to 53 ms for negative emotion. The trends of emotional priming for RTs and number of target faces chosen are
in opposite directions; in fact, emotional priming is in favor
of negative emotion when measuring RTs (faster RTs) and in
favor of positive emotion when measuring the number of
target faces chosen (higher rate).
Number of Choices
Swiss J. Psychol. 69 (4) © 2010 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
A repeated measures ANOVA was performed on the number
of target faces chosen data with Prime Emotion and Prime
Repetition as factors. Results revealed a significant main effect of Prime Emotion, F(1, 59) = 7.06, p = .01 (see Figure
2), but no significant main effect of Prime Repetition, F < 1,
and no significant interaction between these two factors, F < 1.
Reaction Times
We also conducted a repeated measures ANOVA on the RT
data with Prime Emotion and Prime Repetition as factors.
There was a significant main effect of Prime Emotion,
F(1, 59) = 5.10, p = .02 (see Figure 3), but no significant
main effect of Prime Repetition, F(1, 59) = 2.77, p > 1, and
no significant interaction, F < 1.
In summary, the results regarding number of target faces
chosen showed significantly more positive primes and RTs
were faster for negative primes.
I. Skandrani-Marzouki & Y. Marzouki: Emotion and Decision Making
Figure 2. Comparison of the number of target faces chosen
by participants when primed by positive versus negative
emotion. Significant priming effect is indicated by asterisks
(**p < .01).
Figure 3. Comparison of the decision RT means (ms) in the
positive and negative emotion priming condition. Significant priming effect is indicated by an asterisk (*p < .05).
Discussion
The present study investigated the effects of emotional repetition priming on decision making by manipulating the
relatedness of the prime and target faces (same face vs.
different face) and also the emotional facial expression of
primes (positive vs. negative). The results revealed a strong
effect of emotional priming. With respect to the number of
candidates chosen for final selection, participants tended to
choose more target faces preceded by positive primes. This
result is consistent with previous studies that have shown
a facilitating role of positive emotion on human performance. This facilitation is reflected in favorable feedback
that has been observed in various tasks such as evaluation,
judgment, decision, etc. (e.g., Channouf, 2000; Channouf
et al., 1999; Clore & Storbeck, 2006; Isen & Patrick, 1983;
Petty, Schumann, Richman, & Strathman, 1993).
Unlike Channouf’s research (2000), the present study
showed a significant effect of priming with RT data. RT responses were significantly faster when participants responded to target faces preceded by primes with negative emotion
relative to positive emotion. This result is consistent with the
evolutionist interpretation provided by Hansen and Hansen
(1994). According to their interpretation, negative emotion
217
has a greater impact than positive emotion on our behavior
both as individuals and also as a species. This evolutionist
approach highlights the adaptive aspect of a person trying to
avoid potential sources of danger, for instance, negative emotional information within the environment. Thus, on the one
hand, our participants are faster at avoiding negative emotional information by pressing the response button quickly.
On the other hand, they have a preference for positive emotional information and therefore respond less quickly but
choose more target faces preceded by positive primes. The
speed of such processing is consistent with the idea that negative affect may foster a processing style that is characterized
by bottom-up processing, whereas positive affect may foster
a top-down processing style that relies more on general
knowledge structures (Bless & Schwarz, 1999; Clore, Gasper, & Garvin, 2001).
Our results do not reveal a reliable masked repetition effect
for faces, either for the number of target faces chosen or for
RT. In other words, whether the target face was preceded by
the same candidate’s face or a different one did not change
the pattern of the priming effect. In the so-called “sandwich
priming” experiment, which is similar to the present experiment, Henson, Mouchlianitis, Matthews, and Kouider (2008)
manipulated face familiarity (famous vs. nonfamous) and
prime repetition condition (same view vs. different view vs.
unprimed). Their results revealed a significant face priming
repetition effect with both behavioral and ERP data for familiar faces, but no priming effect in behavioral data for unfamiliar or nonfamous faces. This latter result is consistent with
our study as all of our stimuli are unfamiliar faces and the
absence of repetition priming in the present study could be
explained by the familiarity effect. In the Henson et al. study
(2008), the repetition variation between the prime face and
the target face preserves the emotional expression even with
views from different perspective. Therefore, the absence of
repetition effects in this study may be attributable to the absence of emotion repetition regardless of face repetition (i.e.,
repetition of the same person’s face). These results are consistent with the idea of an emotional congruency effect between prime and target (Hansen & Shantz, 1995) where each
is processed as two emotively incongruent behaviors.
It is conceivable that the participant’s affective state
could also play an important role in modulating the amount
of priming effects observed under such experimental conditions. The effect of this variable has been demonstrated
by many authors in a variety of tasks including social judgment and the judgment of facial expressions (e.g., Baron,
1987; Bower, 1981; Forgas, 1991; Forgas & Moylan,
1987). Bower’s network model of emotions (Bower, 1981;
Bower & Cohen, 1982) acknowledges the role of mooddependent processes in modulating decision making. The
key idea of this model is that moods can activate memories,
concepts, and categories that are congruent with the valence (positive vs. negative) of a given mood. This influence can operate at a very low level (attentional and perceptual level) as well as at the level of memory retrieval
and judgment. It is possible that the subliminal facial exSwiss J. Psychol. 69 (4) © 2010 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
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I. Skandrani-Marzouki & Y. Marzouki: Emotion and Decision Making
pressions of our prime faces triggered a mood induction
that consequently affected the judgment or the decisional
processes. Our results support Scherer’s proposal (2005)
that emotion has a cognitive component responsible for the
evaluation of objects and events.
From an applied perspective, the present findings suggest that it is advisable that recruiters heed emotional information to optimize the likelihood of making an unbiased
decision. Such a strategy could be crucial in a real environment of an enterprise with high stakes. Alternatively, job
seekers’ advisors have tried to help candidates optimize
their chances of being hired by taking into account factors
such as their social background, gender, physical appearance, stance, and attire. However, more and more, current
research takes into account the influence of emotion and
shows that mood, facial expression, and emotional information are of the same importance as all other factors.
Despite its exploratory dimension, this study provided
further evidence for the role of emotion in modulating cognitive processes. Moreover, it extends the experimental manipulation of subliminal emotion to the masked repetition
priming technique. In light of the results from this simulated hiring experiment, one possible interesting external validation of the study would be an action research project
carried out within an organization and conducted with professionals in a real hiring situation.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Kaitlyn Litcofsky, Sarah
Cleary, Fred Mast, and two anonymous reviewers for their
very helpful comments.
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Yousri Marzouki
UFR de Psychologie
Université de Provence
29 Av. Robert Schuman
FR - 13621 Aix-en-Provence
France
[email protected]
Appendix
Information About the Hiring Task
In order to help you select the appropriate candidates for
the position, we have prepared an overview of standard
steps in the hiring process. These steps start with:
1. Job description: Where the employer defines the criteria
about what the position involves exactly.
2. Advertising the position: The job description is posted
on the internet and in newspapers.
3. Screening applicants: This step is based on a review of
all applicants’ resumes, skills, and whether applicants
meet the education requirements for the job.
4. Interviewing: In this step, the interviewer needs to have
a clear idea of correct responses to a list of questions
involving the applicant’s skills, education, and experience, ask and anticipate general questions based on the
candidate’s responses.
5. Comparing applicants: Applicants are rated according
to how well they performed during the interview.
6. Decision: This step entails two possible outcomes: Job
offer or rejection of application.
The remaining candidates involved in this important selection step showed remarkable education and career backgrounds. Because of the limited number of positions required for the job, during this session, you are invited to
select the candidates who are most likely to proceed to the
final hiring step. Below is a summary of the “average resume” that all remaining candidates share.
– Job or career expectations: Reach high-level managerial position.
– Education: Minimum is master’s degree in management
with high honors.
– References: With respect to schools as well as companies, candidates come from leading institutions.
– Experience: Despite their young age (24 years average),
all candidates have an impressive amount of experience
in various organizations and with different responsibilities.
– Special skills: These candidates have excellent computer skills and programming expertise, including knowledge of specific software and operating systems. Moreover, their talents include good social skills and the ability to work efficiently in a team.
Swiss J. Psychol. 69 (4) © 2010 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern