Are we afraid of different categories of stimuli in identical ways? Evidence from skin conductance responses.

ABSTRACT: Studies have shown that emotional pictures attract more attention than neutral pictures, and pictures of living stimuli have similar advantage in driving attention (vs. nonliving). However, factors of emotion, category and picture context are usually mixed so that whether living and nonliving categories elicit different skin conductance (SC) responses, in both conscious and unconscious conditions, remains to be clarified. In this study, participants were presented with negative and neutral pictures denoting different living and nonliving concepts in conscious (Experiments 1 and 2) and unconscious conditions (40ms, Experiment 3) when their SC responses were measured. The picture context was manipulated in Experiments 2 and 3 as half including human-related information. In three experiments,

SUBMITTER: Tan T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3770652 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature