Conscious awareness is necessary for affective faces to influence social judgments.

ABSTRACT: A growing body of research claims that stimuli presented outside conscious awareness can influence affect, speech perception, decision-making, eating behavior, and social judgments. However, research has shown that conscious awareness is a continuous phenomenon. Using a continuous flash suppression (CFS) paradigm to suppress awareness of affective faces (smiling and scowling), we demonstrate that some awareness of suppressed stimuli is required for the stimuli to influence social judgments. We discovered this using a rigorous within-participants psychophysics method that allowed us to assess awareness at very low levels, which is difficult using traditional methods. Our findings place boundary conditions on claims (made previously by us and others) that stimuli presented completely outside

SUBMITTER: Kleckner IR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6511977 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature