Effects of evaluative priming on search for threatening and neutral images: dummy primes

In the next priming experiment, we will use the same photorealistic stimuli as in the first priming experiment, but we replace congruent and incongruent primes with unpredictive dummy primes. Dummy primes are nonsensical “words” created by rearranging the letters of the original primes from the first experiment (“insect” and “flower”) into non-words (“inswer” and “flosect”). These primes are expected to have neutral meaning and lack semantic association with only one of the two used categories. Instead, both are similarly associated to both target categories. Dummy primes will also be non-predictive of the ensuing target in a second respect. In the first experiment, the two primes – insect versus flower – were predictive of the target of the upcoming search display. However, in our follow-up experiment, the two primes will be presented equally likely prior to both target types, so that they do not indicate the next target category and cannot be used to guide the search. By introducing dummy primes, we aim to obtain the baseline AB towards threat-related targets which can then be compared to the AB towards threat-related target found in Experiment 1, to see the degree to which AB towards threat-related targets is affected by the prime. We predict: (a) an AB towards threat-related stimuli, (b) that dummy primes do not lead to prime type – target type interaction (i.e., that they are not used to guide search or give advantage to threat-related targets), and (c) that dummy primes do not affect search times in target-absent trials. If the above proves to be true, we will be able to directly compare the primed and unprimed search for threatening targets, by comparing across experiment in our analyses.