Unraveling the Mystery About the Negative Valence Bias: Does Arousal Account for Processing Differences in Unpleasant Words?

ABSTRACT: Many studies have found that the emotional content of words affects visual word recognition. However, most of them have only considered affective valence, finding inconsistencies regarding the direction of the effects, especially in unpleasant words. Recent studies suggest that arousal might explain why not all unpleasant words elicit the same behavior. The aim of the present research was to study the role of arousal in unpleasant word recognition. To do that, we carried out an ERP experiment in which participants performed a lexical decision task that included unpleasant words which could vary across three levels of arousal (intermediate, high, and very high) and words which were neutral in valence and had an intermediate level of arousal. Results showed that, within unpleasant words, tho

SUBMITTER: Vieitez L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8593103 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature