The emotional valence of a given stimulus is more quickly identified when such stimulus is preceded by another stimulus with a congruent valence (e.g., a positive word preceded by another positive word), a phenomenon termed affective priming. The present study investigated whether affective priming occurs when chords (consonant/dissonant, high/low pitch) are used as primes, and faces (happy or sad) are used as targets. Forty undergraduate students were submitted to 64 trials divided in eight experimental conditions with eight trials each. The eight experimental conditions were half congruent and half incongruent. The congruent combinations consisted of (a) consonant/high pitch—happy, (b) consonant/low pitch—happy, (c) dissonant/high pitch—sad, and (d) dissonant/low pitch—sad, while the incongruent combinations consisted of (e) dissonant/high pitch—happy, (f) dissonant/low pitch—happy, (g) consonant/high pitch—sad, and (h) consonant/low pitch—sad. Faster responses were found in the congruent condition when compared with the incongruent one, except when the high pitch—happy face combination was presented. These results partially replicate previous findings suggesting that the salience of the target stimuli can hinder the affective priming effect, which seems consistent with the happiness superiority effect literature.

当这种刺激之前有另一个具有一致效价的刺激（例如，一个正面词之前有另一个正面词）时，可以更快地识别给定刺激的情绪效价，这种现象称为情感启动。本研究调查了当和弦（辅音/不和谐音，高/低音高）被用作启动时，情感启动是否发生，而面孔（快乐或悲伤）被用作目标。40 名本科生接受了 64 项试验，分为 8 个试验条件，每个试验条件 8 次。八个实验条件一半一致，一半不一致。全等组合包括（a）辅音/高音-快乐，（b）辅音/低音-快乐，（c）不和谐/高音-悲伤，和（d）不和谐/低音-悲伤，而不一致的组合包括（e）不和谐/高音-快乐，（f）不和谐/低音-快乐，（g）辅音/高音-悲伤，和（h）辅音/低音-悲伤。与不一致的情况相比，一致条件下的反应更快，除非出现高音 - 快乐脸组合。这些结果部分复制了先前的研究结果，表明目标刺激的显着性会阻碍情感启动效应，这似乎与幸福优势效应文献一致。