Negation and Valence - Binary Choice

This study investigates whether negation is associated with valence. To test this hypothesis, we will employ a two-choice sentence-completion (sentence-matching) paradigm. In each trial, participants are presented with a sentence beginning that contains either a negation or an affirmation. They are then asked to choose which of two possible sentence continuations better fits the beginning. The two continuations differ in adjective polarity, containing either a positive or a negative evaluative adjective. If negation is associated with positive valence, we hypothesize that negated sentence beginnings will be more likely completed with positive-polarity adjectives, compared to affirmed sentence beginnings.