Are all negative words alike? Behavioral differences in processing negative words associated and not associated with physical and social pain.

ABSTRACT: Studies examining whether stimulus valence affects cognitive processing and motor responses yield mixed results, possibly due to treating negative words as a homogeneous category. Words related to pain may hold distinct status because of their relevance to survival. Thus, they offer a unique opportunity to investigate semantic influences on cognitive processing. This study aims to determine if words related to physical and social pain elicit stronger aversion than general negative words by assessing the Affective Compatibility Effect in implicit and explicit tasks. In Experiment 1, 35 participants performed a lexical decision task on 60 positive words and 60 negative words, of which 20 not related to pain, 20 related to physical pain, and 20 related to social pain. Participants held down t

SUBMITTER: Borelli E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11472825 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature