The influence of valence and arousal on reasoning: Affective priming in the semantic verification task

The aim of present study was to examine the effects of affective valence and arousal on reasoning process. Reasoning was measured using semantic verification task and the influence of valence and arousal was tracked using affective priming paradigm. Primes were photographs varied on two dimensions, emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative) and arousal (high, low). 49 psychology students were used as subjects. Results showed that reaction time needed for semantic verification was significantly faster for positive-high arousing in comparison to positive-low arousing situation and for neutral-high arousing in comparison to neutral-low arousing situation, but there were no significant differences in negative low and high arousing situations. Also, significant differences were found among all three valences in high arousing situations and there were no such differences in low arousing situations. These results reveal the importance of both arousal and valence in the research of the influence of emotions on the reasoning process.