Emotion 2010, Vol. 10, No.

6, 915922

2010 American Psychological Association 1528-3542/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020306

The Effects of Subliminal Anger and Sadness Primes on Agency Appraisals

Zixu Yang and Eddie M. W. Tong
National University of Singapore
Two studies examined whether appraisals can be differentially affected by subliminal anger and sadness primes. Participants from Singapore (Experiment 1) and China (Experiment 2) were exposed to either subliminal angry faces or subliminal sad faces. Supporting appraisal theories of emotions, participants exposed to subliminal angry faces were more likely to appraise negative events as caused by other people and those exposed to subliminal sad faces were more likely to appraise the same events as caused by situational factors. The results provide the first evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects. They show that cognitive functions such as appraisals can be affected by subliminal emotional stimuli of the same valence. Keywords: emotion, agency appraisals, subliminal, anger, sadness

An effective emotional system should be efficient enough to elicit responses tailored to specific emotional stimuli, even if these stimuli are not available to conscious awareness (Lazarus, 1991; Winkielman & Berridge, 2004; Zajonc, 1980). This functional perspective implies that distinctive cognitive functions (e.g., appraisals, stereotyping, and persuasion) can be activated by subliminal stimuli associated with specific emotions. Support for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects would have to meet at least two requirements. First, it has to show that distinctive cognitive responses can be activated by subliminal primes. Second, it has to demonstrate emotion-specific effects, not simply valence-based effects. However, past studies have found support for each requirement but never both together, and convincing evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects remained elusive. With regard to the first requirement, research has established that cognitive functions can be affected by subliminal emotional primes (e.g., Ferguson, Bargh, & Nayak, 2005; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Stapel, Koomen, & Ruys, 2002). However, what these studies found were effects based on valence and not necessarily effects based on specific emotions. Further, studies are beginning to show that the cognitive effects of different emotions are better understood from their approach-withdrawal distinction (e.g., Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2004; Lerner & Keltner, 2001) and that asymmetric prefrontal activation should reflect such motivational differences rather than valence as previously thought (Davidson, 2003; Harmon-Jones, 2003). This suggests that the adaptive significance of emotions might lie more in their approach-withdrawal motivational function than in their subjective valence.

This article was published Online First November 8, 2010. Zixu Yang and Eddie M. W. Tong, Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eddie M. W. Tong, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, 9 Arts Link, AS4 02-09, Singapore 117570. E-mail: psytmwe@nus.edu.sg 915

With regard to the second requirement, past studies have also shown that conscious emotions of the same valence can elicit distinctive cognitive effects (e.g., Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer, 1994; DeSteno, Petty, Wegener, & Rucker, 2000; Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). However, these studies did not examine subliminal effects because they used conscious emotion-induction methods (e.g., recall, vignette, music) in which participants could be aware of the origins of their responses. In addition, the participants in these studies largely reported moderate to strong emotional feelings. However, subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects should occur in the absence of strong emotional feelings because subliminal emotional primes generally do not elicit consciously felt emotional experiences (Ruys & Stapel, 2008; Zemack-Rugar, Bettman, & Fitzsimons, 2007). Our objective was to provide the first evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects, focusing on appraisals as our cognitive process of interest. According to appraisal theories, events can be appraised along a set of appraisal dimensions such as the extent to which they are harmful to well-being and who or what caused them. Arnold (1960) defined appraisals as direct, immediate, and intuitive, implying that appraisals can be activated automatically. Subsequent theorists have posited that appraisals can be activated by priming and associative processes (Clore & Ortony, 2000; Leventhal & Scherer, 1987; Smith & Kirby, 2000) and recent studies have also indicated that simple appraisals such as motivational congruence can be computed in automatic manners (Moors & De Houwer, 2001; Moors, De Houwer, & Eelen, 2004). Appraisal theories posit that each emotion can be elicited by a specific pattern of appraisals. For example, anger can be provoked when an undesirable event is appraised as caused by other people (Agency-Others) and sadness can result when the same event is appraised as caused by uncontrollable circumstances (AgencySituation; Lazarus, 1991; Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1984; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). The reverse is also true in that emotions can influence evaluation of subsequent events through their associated appraisals (Keltner et al., 1993).

916

YANG AND TONG

Importantly, because appraisal theories postulate fine differences in appraisals between individual emotions, they predict that the appraisal tendency consequent of an emotion is richer than a simple valence-based evaluation as it also incorporates other appraisals (e.g., Agency). Hence, an angry person is more likely than a sad person to appraise events as caused by other people and a sad person is more likely than an angry person to appraise them as caused by situational factors, even though both are as likely as each other to appraise events negatively. Supporting this view, Keltner et al. (1993) found that, relative to sad participants, angry participants were indeed more likely to attribute negative events to other people and were less likely to attribute them to situational factors (see also, Lerner & Keltner, 2001). However, these studies employed conscious emotioninduction techniques and it was thus never clear whether the same effects could be subliminally activated. In fact, this problem is emblematic of appraisal research in general. Except for a small number of studies (Moors & De Houwer, 2001; Moors et al., 2004), almost all appraisal studies employed methods (e.g., vignette and recall) that deny the study of automatic appraisalemotion processes that appraisal theorists have long advocated (Smith & Kirby, 2000). We aimed to demonstrate subliminal emotion-specific appraisal effects by showing whether appraisals of causal agency could be systematically activated by subliminal primes associated with anger and sadness. As primes, we used facial expressions. Facial expressions serve communicative functions, and as primes they approximate the social environment more closely than other stimuli (Ekman, 1984). They can induce congruent emotional responses through emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) and consistently, facial electromyographic studies have shown that people unintentionally mimic subliminal facial expressions (e.g., Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed, 2000). Therefore, it is plausible that the mimicry elicited by subliminal facial primes could instigate facial feedback effects (Adelmann & Zajonc, 1989) that activate consistent emotional responses, including appraisals. Our participants were first exposed to subliminal angry or sad faces and then indicated in an open-ended format what they thought were the causes of several events. Their responses were coded for whether Agency-Others and Agency-Situation appraisals were made. Our hypotheses were that the subliminal angry facial expressions should elicit more Agency-Others appraisals than the subliminal sad facial expressions, and conversely, that the subliminal sad faces should elicit more Agency-Situation appraisals than the subliminal angry faces. This design satisfied the two requirements for testing subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects since it compared the cognitive effects of subliminal primes associated with two emotions of the same valence. In addition, by comparing anger and sadness, one of which (anger) is generally more approach-driven than the other (sadness; Harmon-Jones, 2003; Roseman, 2001), the current studies could inform the effects of emotions based on their motivational functions. Self-reports of angry and sad feelings were collected, but following past findings (e.g., Ruys & Stapel, 2008; Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005; Zemack-Rugar et al., 2007), we did not expect our subliminal primes to produce strong angry and sad feelings. Hence, we aimed not only to show that appraisals can be automatically activated by subliminal emotional primes, but also to show that such processes do not require strong emotional feelings.

Experiment 1 Method
Participants. Sixty-eight undergraduates from the National University of Singapore (NUS) participated for course credits (52 women, mean age 20.13, SD 1.35). An equal number of participants were randomly assigned to the Anger Prime and Sadness Prime conditions. Procedure and materials. Participants were seated in partitioned computer terminals about 50 cm from the computer screen. The experiment was administered using DirectRT (Jarvis, 2008). Participants were told that they would be participating in several unrelated studies. The first task required them to rate the extent to which a set of Korean characters were positive or negative in meaning. Responses to this task, which served only to administer the facial primes, were not of main interest. Like most Singaporeans, none of our participants understood Korean. As a cover story, we stated that people can infer the meaning of foreign languages from the shape of their characters. Participants started with five practice trials, followed by 50 main trials. Both practice and main trials involved the same procedure. Our priming procedure was adapted from similar studies (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). On each trial, a fixation point () was presented for 1,000 ms at the center of the screen. Participants were told to focus on this point, allegedly because it would help prepare them for the coming stimuli. A mask that comprised diagonal cross-hatches on a gray background was then presented for 200 ms. Next, a facial prime was presented. Participants in the Anger Prime condition were exposed only to angry faces; those in the Sadness Prime condition were exposed only to sad faces. Exposure time for the primes ranged between 26 and 28 ms. Our computers had a monitor refresh rate of 75 Hz and an Intel GMA 3000 graphic card with memory capability up to 256 MB. With this hardware configuration, the lowest exposure time possible was 26 ms. We set the exposure time at 26 ms, but because of hardware functions we could not control, the actual exposure time varied slightly between 26 and 28 ms (as indicated by DirectRT). The facial prime was followed by a backward mask which comprised a wall of & distributed uniformly over a gray background; this mask was presented for 200 ms. A Korean word (e.g., ) was then presented for 3,000 ms and participants had to rate it on a 7-point scale that ranged from 1 (extremely in negative meaning) to 7 (extremely in positive meaning).1 Once a response was made or when 3,000 ms had elapsed, the next trial was activated. Fifty different Korean words were presented in randomized orders across participants. Evaluation of the Korean words did not differ between the Anger (M 4.06, SD .49) and Sadness (M 3.98, SD .55) Prime conditions, t(66) .59, p .56, suggesting that the anger and sadness primes were of comparable valence. Research suggests that facial expressions of an ethnicity different from that of the perceiver might elicit unwanted stereotypic responses (Bargh et al., 1996; Devine, Plant, Amodio, HarmonJones, & Vance, 2002). To avoid such confound, Asian faces were
Consistent with past studies, we used characters that were affectively bland (e.g., Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). In a pilot study, 20 NUS undergraduates rated each character on the same scale. All ratings were not significantly different from the mid-point of the scale, all ts 1.75, ps .05.
1

AUTOMATIC EMOTION-APPRAISAL PROCESSES

917

used. We constructed four facial expressions, with both genders for each emotion (see Appendix A). Half of the trials in each condition comprised faces of one gender, in random orders determined by DirectRT. The gender of the facial primes was not of interest and an equal number of both genders were used to ensure that our findings were not because of just one gender. After all 50 trials, participants completed the Agency measure. The measure comprised 10 trials each describing a hypothetical negative event (see Appendix B). These events were derived from interviews with NUS students regarding their everyday experiences. The participants indicated what they thought was the most likely cause of each event in one brief sentence. On each trial, an event was presented until a response was typed in. Participants were told that there were no right or wrong answers and that they should provide the first cause that came to mind. The events were presented in randomized orders across participants. Next, participants rated how angry and sad they felt currently on 7-point scales that ranged from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely). Finally, a debriefing revealed that none of the participant thought that the two tasks were related and none had knowledge of the actual research question. Participants were thanked and dismissed. Pretesting the visibility of the facial primes. Primes presented at 26 to 28 ms tend to be perceived as flashes but are too quick to be identified. Past studies that presented facial primes at similar exposure times found them to be unidentifiable (e.g., Stapel et al., 2002).2 However, no data on whether our participants could identify the facial primes was collected. In a pilot-study to assess the visibility of the primes, 33 NUS undergraduates were subject to the same priming procedure. The only exception was that participants were exposed to only one facial expression across the 50 trials; eight participants were exposed to the female angry face, eight were exposed to the male angry face, seven were exposed to the female sad face, and the rest were exposed to the male sad face. After the 50th trial, they were presented with three faces (an angry face, a sad face, and a neutral face, all of the same gender as their primes) and indicated which they thought was presented when they rated the Korean words. A third (neutral) face was included to make the identification task more difficult. Only six (out of 16) participants in the Anger Prime condition and four (out of 17) participants in the Sadness Prime condition correctly identified the facial primes. Recognition rate across both conditions did not differ from chance, 2 0.14, p .71.

responses were summed across all 10 events to give composite Agency-Others, Agency-Situation, and Agency-Self scores. Outliers of more than 2 SDs from the mean were replaced by the respective average values.3 A 2 (Prime) 2 (Agency) mixed ANOVA revealed a significant interaction effect, F(1, 66) 13.07, p .001 2 .17. Further analyses revealed that there were more Agency-Others responses in the Anger Prime condition than in the Sadness Prime condition, t(66) 2.27, p .03, and there were more AgencySituation responses in the Sadness Prime condition than in the Anger Prime condition, t(66) 2.67, p .01 (all tests were two-tailed; see Table 1). We found a number of Agency-Self responses on first observation and coded for this appraisal. The average number of AgencySelf responses was 4.79 (SD 2.01) and 4.41 (SD 1.64) in the Anger Prime and Sadness Prime conditions, respectively. Unexpectedly, more internal attributions were made than external (human and situation) attributions, all Fs 24.23, ps .001, 2 .42. However, we did not expect to find an effect of Prime on Agency-Self because there is little evidence from appraisal research that anger and sadness differ on Agency-Self; further analyses supported this expectation, F(1, 66) .74, p .39, 2 .01. Hence, the anger and sadness primes affected only related appraisals (Agency-Others and Agency-Situation) but not unrelated appraisals (Agency-Self). There was no effect of Prime on reported anger, t(66) .41, p .68, and reported sadness, t(66) .67, p .51. At best only weak feelings of anger and sadness were reported in the Anger Prime (Manger 2.35, SDanger 1.25; Msadness 2.62, SDsadness 1.52) and Sadness Prime (Manger 2.24, SDanger 1.10; Msadness 2.88, SDsadness 1.74) conditions. It is possible that the items were not sensitive enough to capture emotional feelings, but if there were strong feelings of anger and sadness, they should have been revealed as high scores. Further, these items are similar to those used in past studies (e.g., Ruys & Stapel, 2008), which also found no effect of subliminal primes on reported emotions and weak levels of emotional feelings. At the minimal, we can conclude that anger and sadness were not strongly felt.

Experiment 2
Experiment 2 extended Experiment 1 in several ways. First, we did not ask the main participants in Experiment 1 about the visibility of the primes and this was rectified in Experiment 2. Second, we reduced the priming timeframe to 16 to 18 ms. Past studies found that facial stimuli presented at such speed were almost impossible to identify (Winkielman et al., 2005). If ExperDespite making this statement, we also urge caution in making straightforward comparisons between studies in the visibility of subliminal primes. Whether a prime can be identified depends on many factors other than exposure time, such as the type of masks used, the type of primes presented, brightness of the experimental setting, and the location of the prime on the screen. 3 It is possible that other appraisals were made. These other appraisals were not analyzed because we wanted to focus on the current research question. In addition, given that our participants were asked specifically about Agency appraisals, and given that the responses were short onesentence responses, it was hard to detect other appraisals.
2

Results and Discussion

Two trained coders blind to the experimental assignment independently coded all 680 responses from 68 participants. A response indicating that the participant had appraised the event as caused by another person(s) was coded as an Agency-Others response (e.g., the response He was boring for the event The night out with your date went badly). A response indicating that the event was appraised as caused by nonhuman factors was coded as an Agency-Situation response (e.g., Bad Weather). AgencySelf, in which the event was appraised as caused by the self, was also coded (e.g., I was in a bad mood); the reason for examining this appraisal will be shortly mentioned. Other responses that could not be classified as such were coded as Others. Interrater agreement was high (r .83, p .001). Discrepancies were resolved by a third coder also blind to the experimental assignment. Respective

918

YANG AND TONG

Table 1 Number of Agency-Others and Agency-Situation Responses as a Function of Anger Prime and Sadness Prime (Experiment 1)
Agency-Others M Anger Prime Sadness Prime 2.21 1.53 SD 1.43 .99 Agency-Situation M 1.29 1.97 SD .87 1.19

iment 1 could be replicated even with this extremely rapid speed, evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects would be stronger. Third, both negative and positive events were examined in Experiment 2. Past studies have shown that primes tend to influence evaluation of only valence-congruent targets (Ravaja, Kallinen, Saari, & Keltikangas-Jarvinen, 2004). Consistently, Keltner et al. (1993) found that angry and sad feelings affected agency appraisals of negative events but not of positive events, suggesting that emotions are more likely to influence appraisals of valence-congruent events. Thus, we expected the hypothesized effects of the subliminal facial primes on agency appraisals to be found only with the negative events. Finally, participants in Experiment 2 were undergraduates from China. China and Singapore are typically classified together as collectivistic cultures but they are very different in numerous aspects including philosophical outlook, cultural values, and personal goals (Lau, 1992). Thus, there are sufficient differences between China and Singapore to provide an initial but substantive test of the cross-cultural consistency of the results.

traveling overseas could only be because of theft and 75% claimed that You missed a movie that you wanted to watch was quite impossible to imagine. These findings are interesting in their own right, but they might not be appropriate for this study. Because only eight negative events were examined, only eight positive events were used (see Appendix B). Evaluation of the Korean words again did not differ between the Anger Prime condition (M 4.18, SD .64) and the Sadness Prime condition (M 4.33, SD .71), t(110) 1.17, p .25. A debriefing conducted at the end of the experiment revealed that no participant thought the tasks were related or knew what the study was about. Participants were also asked whether they had seen any faces during the priming task, and if so, what facial expression was shown (Bargh & Chartrand, 2000). Four (out of 56) participants in the Anger Prime condition and nine (out of 56) participants in the Sadness Prime condition reported having seen something resembling faces but none could correctly identify the faces.

Results and Discussion

Two coders blind to the experimental assignment coded the 1,792 responses from all participants into the same AgencyOthers, Agency-Situation, Agency-Self, and Others categories. Interrater reliability was high (r .94, p .001) and discrepancies were resolved by a third coder. The responses were summed to produce Agency-Others, Agency-Situation, and Agency-Self. Outliers of more than 2 SDs from the mean were replaced with the respective average values. Most relevant to our hypotheses, a 2 (Prime) 2 (Agency) 2 (Events) mixed ANOVA revealed a significant interaction effect between Prime and Agency, F(1, 110) 19.63, p .001, 2 .15, which was qualified by a significant three-way interaction effect, F(1, 110) 4.35, p .04, 2 .04. We proceeded to examine the critical Prime Agency interaction within each Events condition. Consistent with predictions, a significant Prime Agency interaction was found in the Negative Events condition, F(1, 110) 41.23, p .001, 2 .27, but not in the Positive Events condition, F(1, 110) 5.05, p .16, 2 .02. Further analyses in the Negative Events condition showed that there were significantly more Agency-Others responses in the Anger Prime condition than in the Sadness Prime condition, t(110) 2.49, p .01, and more Agency-Situation responses in the Sadness Prime condition than in the Anger Prime condition, t(110) 6.56, p .001 (see Table 2). Hence, Experiment 1 was replicated with a quicker priming speed and a different cultural sample. However, there was no significant effect of Prime on Agency-Others, F(1, 66) .04, p .83, 2 .001, and AgencySituation, F(1, 66) 2.90, p .09, 2 .04, in the Positive Events condition. Therefore, as predicted, the facial primes affected only appraisals of events of the same valence. There appears to be a high level of Agency-Self responses to the negative events (Manger_prime 4.04, SDanger_prime 1.56; Msadness_prime 3.71, SDsadness_prime 1.37) and to the positive events (Manger_prime 4.43, SDanger_prime 1.04; Msadness_prime 4.20, SDsadness_prime 1.41) in both Prime conditions. In fact, there was a stronger tendency to attribute both positive and negative events to the self than to external factors (other people and impersonal causes) in both Prime conditions, all Fs 56.51,

Method
Participants. One hundred and 12 students (104 females, mean age 20.45, SD 1.22) from Tangshan Vocational Technical College in China volunteered for this study after appeals were made during their lectures. An equal number of participants were randomly assigned to the Anger and Sadness Prime conditions. Procedure and materials. The procedure and materials were identical to those in Experiment 1 except for these changes. First, we used a computer with a monitor refresh rate of 60 Hz and an ATI Mobility Radeon 1600 video graphic card with 128 MB memory capability. This configuration permitted the extremely short exposure timeframe of 16 18 ms for pictorial primes. Again, although we set the exposure time to 16 ms (which is the fastest speed allowed by this configuration), the actual time varied slightly between 16 and 18 ms because of hardware functions we could not control. Second, all instructions were given in Mandarin that is the dominant language of this sample of Chinese participants. Back-translation ensured that the instructions were semantically equivalent. Third, positive events were constructed from interviews with undergraduates about their everyday experiences. Fourth, all but two negative events from Experiment 1 were reused. Because the participants in Experiment 2 had to respond to more events, we were concerned about fatigue effects. A pretesting conducted on another sample of 20 Chinese participants showed ceiling effects with two negative events: 90% of these participants stated that the event Your personal belongings were lost while

AUTOMATIC EMOTION-APPRAISAL PROCESSES

919

Table 2 Number of Agency-Others and Agency-Situation Responses as a Function of Anger Prime and Sadness Prime in the Negative Events and Positive Events Conditions (Experiment 2)
Agency-Others M Negative events Anger Prime Sadness Prime Positive events Anger Prime Sadness Prime 1.33 .91 1.94 1.98 SD 1.08 .70 1.21 1.24 Agency-Situation M 1.11 1.95 .76 1.27 SD .64 .71 .76 1.03

ps .001, 2 .51. A 2 (Prime) 2 (Events) mixed ANOVA conducted on Agency-Self revealed a significant main effect of Events, F(1, 110) 5.60, p .02, 2 .05, indicating more Agency-Self responses in the Positive Events condition than in the Negative Events condition. There was no main effect of Prime, F(1, 110) 2.41, p .12, 2 .02, and no interaction effect, F(1, 110) .06, p .81, 2 .001. Hence, Agency-Self was not affected by the facial primes in both Events conditions. As in Experiment 1, reported anger, t(110) 1.48, p .14, and sadness, t(110) .78, p .44, were not affected by Prime. Only weak levels of anger and sadness were reported in the Anger Prime (Manger 2.32, SDanger 1.49; Msadness 2.23, SDsadness 1.53) and Sadness Prime (Manger 1.91, SDanger 1.44; Msadness 2.00, SDsadness 1.61) conditions.

General Discussion
If emotional systems are effective adaptations to environmental challenges, they should be capable of reacting automatically and discriminately to stimuli of different emotions so that emotionspecific cognitive responses can be activated. However, evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects had not been forthcoming. Focusing on agency appraisals, we found across two cultural samples (Singapore and China) that subliminal angry facial primes generated more appraisals of negative events as caused by other people (Agency-Others) than subliminal sad facial primes. In contrast, subliminal sad facial primes generated more appraisals of the same events as caused by impersonal situational factors (Agency-Situation) than subliminal angry facial primes. Cognitive processes are known to differ as a function of affective valence but emotions can influence cognitive functions in richer ways. Recent research suggests that emotions can be differentiated according to their approach-withdrawal functions (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1997), implying that emotions that differ on this motivational distinction, such as anger versus sadness, should exhibit different psychological consequences regardless of their valence. Supporting this notion, past studies have shown that an angry person is more likely than a sad person to evaluate events as caused by other people but the sad person is more likely than the angry person to appraise events as caused by impersonal situational factors (Keltner et al., 1993). The current studies extended this research by showing that the same effects could occur without a strong experience of anger or sadness or an awareness of their origins. Across two studies, anger and sadness representations

were activated by subliminal facial primes. There was little evidence to claim that participants were aware of the facial primes. Debriefing data revealed that the participants were unaware that their responses to the Agency measure were shaped by the prior priming task. There was no indication of strong anger and sadness feelings. In addition, the anger and sadness ratings did not differ between the Prime conditions. Despite these, participants exhibited distinctive and predicted patterns of agency appraisals as a function of the subliminal facial primes. Moreover, these effects were not just emotion-specific; they were also appraisal-specific. There is little in appraisal theories to suggest that anger and sadness should differ in Agency-Self (except in the case of self-anger that is strongly associated with Agency-Self; Ellsworth & Tong, 2006). Consistently, in both studies, the facial primes did not affect the extent to which negative events were attributed to the self; they only influenced the extent to which the same events were attributed to external humans and situational factors. The mechanism by which subliminal facial expressions influence appraisals should be further clarified. We speculated that this effect could be linked to the capacity to mimic facial expressions (Hatfield et al., 1994) and to facial feedback effects (Adelmann & Zajonc, 1989). Specifically, we posited that the subliminal facial primes might have elicited spontaneous and unconscious mimicry. Efference effects from the facial muscular changes could in turn elicit emotionally congruent responses, including associated changes in appraisals. Future studies could examine this account but note that there is an alternative perspective that does not involve automatic mimicry. There could be evolutionarily programmed or culturally scripted memory networks that directly link appraisals to representations of specific facial expressions. Accordingly, information unique to each facial expression is automatically extracted, activating the relevant memory network and producing associated changes in appraisals without mimicry (see a similar account proposed by Smith & Kirby, 2000). Of interest is what information is extracted from facial primes that could possibly mediate their effects. Facial expressions can convey multiple pieces of information simultaneously, such as affect, intention, appraisals, threats, and relationship status (e.g., Ekman, 1993; Keltner & Kring, 1998; Smith, 1989). In the present studies, the anger expressions could have conveyed information associated with power and authority, and the sadness expressions could have conveyed information associated with helplessness, and activation of representations associated with power and helplessness could have activated appraisals of Agency-Others and Agency-Situation, respectively. Future studies could examine the veracity of these accounts (note that they do not contradict each other). In both studies, the number of Agency-Others and AgencySituation responses were quite small. However, note that there were only 10 or 8 events (of each valence) to respond to and participants gave only one cause to each event. Based on chance alone, the expected number of responses reflecting each of the three Agency categories should not be high. Nevertheless, this could still pose a problem for the analyses if the distributions of the Agency-Others and Agency-Situation scores were too skewed to the right. However, in both studies, the distributions were fairly normal, and even when the scores were subject to an appropriate (square-root) transformation and then reanalyzed, the results were similar.

920

YANG AND TONG Toward a synthesis. Psychophysiology, 40, 655 665. doi:10.1111/ 1469 8986.00067 DeSteno, D., Petty, R. E., Wegener, D. T., & Rucker, D. D. (2000). Beyond valence in the perception of likelihood: The role of emotion specificity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 397 416. doi: 10.1037/00223514.78.3.397 Devine, P. G., Plant, E., Amodio, D. M., Harmon-Jones, E., & Vance, S. L. (2002). The regulation of explicit and implicit race bias: The role of motivations to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 835 848. doi:10.1037/00223514.82.5.835 Dimberg, U., Thunberg, M., & Elmehed, K. (2000). Unconscious facial reactions to emotional facial expressions. Psychological Science, 11, 86 89. doi:10.1111/14679280.00221 Ekman, P. (1984). Expression and the nature of emotion. In K. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 319 343). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist, 48, 384 392. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.48.4.384 Ellsworth, P. C., & Tong, E. M. W. (2006). What does it mean to be angry at yourself? Categories, appraisals, and the problem of language. Emotion, 6, 572586. doi:10.1037/1528 3542.6.4.572 Ferguson, M. J., Bargh, J. A., & Nayak, D. A. (2005). After-affects: How automatic evaluations influence the interpretation of subsequent, unrelated stimuli. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 182191. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2004.05.008 Harmon-Jones, E. (2003). Clarifying the emotive functions of asymmetrical frontal cortical activity. Psychophysiology, 40, 838 848. doi: 10.1111/1469 8986.00121 Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Primitive emotional contagion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Heine, S. J., & Lehman, D. R. (1995). Cultural variation in unrealistic optimism: Does the West feel more vulnerable than the East? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 595 607. doi:10.1037/0022 3514.68.4.595 Jarvis, B. G. (2008). DirectRT Precision Timing Software (Version 2008.1.0.10) [computer software]. New York: Empirisoft Corp. Keltner, D., & Kring, A. M. (1998). Emotion, social function, and psychopathology. Review of General Psychology, 2, 320 342. doi:10.1037/ 1089 2680.2.3.320 Keltner, D., Ellsworth, E. C., & Edwards, K. (1993). Beyond simple pessimism: Effects of sadness and anger on social perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 740 752. doi:10.1037/0022 3514.64.5.740 Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1997). Motivated attention: Affect, activation and action. In P. J. Lang, R. F. Simons, & M. T. Balaban (Eds.), Attention and orienting: Sensory and motivational processes (pp. 97135). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Lau, S. (1992). Collectivisms individualism: Value preference, personal control, and the desire for freedom among Chinese in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 361366. doi:10.1016/0191 8869(92)90115 6 Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press. Lerner, J. S., Gonzalez, R. M., Small, D. A., & Fischhoff, B. (2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14, 144 150. doi:10.1111/1467 9280.01433 Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2001). Fear, anger, and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 146 159. doi:10.1037/0022 3514.81.1.146 Leventhal, H., & Scherer, K. R. (1987). The relationship of emotion to cognition: A functional approach to a semantic controversy. Cognition and Emotion, 1, 328. doi:10.1080/02699938708408361 Moors, A., & De Houwer, J. (2001). Automatic appraisal of motivational

We did not use the usual close-ended appraisal items but analyzed open-ended appraisal responses instead. Our dependent variable was activation of Agency appraisals, which do not have to be measured using the typical appraisal items. Self-report appraisal items (e.g., How much is this event caused by situational factors?) that have notable advantages but also well-known limitations. First, any ambiguity in the items (e.g., situational factors can be interpreted in different ways) would incur measurement error. Second, responses to these items may reflect schematic theories of appraisals and emotions. Third, suggestive item wordings can mislead respondents to infer that an appraisal was made when in fact it was not. The open-ended measures used here should be less susceptible to these effects. In addition, they allow participants to respond more spontaneously. This method of assessing appraisals allows researchers to detect not only hypothesized appraisals but also unanticipated ones. However, we do not mean that this method is superior to self-report as it also has limitationsthe extent to which specific appraisals can be coded depends on the complexity of the appraisal and the length of the responses (Footnote 3; Yap & Tong, 2009). Our findings were replicated across Singapore and China. In addition, there were more Agency-Self appraisals than AgencyOthers and Agency-Situation appraisals in response to the negative events in both cultures, which is quite consistent with findings that East Asians tend to be more self-critical (Heine & Lehman, 1995). However, similar findings were found among the Chinese participants in response to the positive events, which support studies showing that East Asians are also prone to self-enhancement biases (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003). In summary, there was a general tendency to attribute events to the self regardless of their valence. To conclude, our findings underscore the sensitivity of the human emotional system to emotion-specific cues and its capacity to activate cognitive responses matched to these cues. Further, these reactions can occur outside of conscious awareness and without strong emotional feelings, and they only require a nonconscious activation of emotion representations.

References
Adelmann, P. K., & Zajonc, R. B. (1989). Facial efference and the experience of emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 40, 249 280. doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.40.020189.001341 Arnold, M. B. (1960). Emotion and personality. New York: Columbia University Press. Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (2000). The mind in the middle. A practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In H. Reis & C. Judd (Eds.), Research method in social psychology (pp. 253285). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230 244. doi:10.1037/00223514.71.2.230 Bodenhausen, G. V., Sheppard, L. A., & Kramer, G. P. (1994). Negative affect and social judgment. The differential impact of anger and sadness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 66, 621 632. Clore, G. L., & Ortony, A. (2000). Cognition in emotion: Always, sometimes, or never? In R. D. Lane & L. Nadel (Eds.), Cognitive neuroscience of emotion (pp. 24 61). New York: Oxford University Press. Davidson, R. J. (2003). Affective neuroscience and psychophysiology:

AUTOMATIC EMOTION-APPRAISAL PROCESSES valence: Motivational affective priming and Simon effects. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 749 766. doi:10.1080/02699930143000293 Moors, A., De Houwer, J., & Eelen, P. (2004). Automatic stimulus-goal comparisons: Support from motivational affective priming studies. Cognition and Emotion, 18, 29 54. doi:10.1080/02699930244000462 Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (1993). Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 723739. doi: 10.1037/00223514.64.5.723 Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., & Collins, A. (1988). The cognitive structure of emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1037/1528 3542.1.4.348 Ravaja, N., Kallinen, K., Saari, T., & Keltikangas-Jarvinen, L. (2004). Suboptimal exposure to facial expressions when viewing video messages from a small screen: Effects on emotion, attention, and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 10, 120 113. doi: 10.1037/1076-898X.10.2.120 Roseman, I. (1984). Cognitive determinants of emotion: A structural theory. In P. Shaver (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology. Vol. 5: Emotions, relationships, and health (pp. 1136). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Roseman, I. J. (2001). A model of appraisal in the emotion system: Integrating theory, research, and applications. In K. R. Scherer, A. Schorr, & T. Johnstone, (Eds.), Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research (pp. 68 91). Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Ruys, K. I., & Stapel, D. A. (2008). The secret life of emotions. Psychological Science, 19, 385391. doi:10.1111/j.14679280.2008.02097.x Scherer, K. R. (1984). Emotion as a multi-component process: A model and some cross-cultural data. In P. Shaver (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology: Emotions, relationships and health (pp. 37 63). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Toguchi, Y. (2003). Pancultural selfenhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 60 79. doi:10.1037/00223514.84.1.60

921

Smith, C. A. (1989). Dimensions of appraisal and physiological response in emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 339 353. doi:10.1037/00223514.56.3.339 Smith, C. A., & Ellsworth, P. C. (1985). Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 813 838. doi:10.1037/00223514.48.4.813 Smith, C. A., & Kirby, L. D. (2000). Consequences require antecedents: Toward a process model of emotion elicitation. In J. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition (pp. 83106). New York: Cambridge University Press. Stapel, D. A., Koomen, W., & Ruys, K. I. (2002). The effects of diffuse and distinct affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 60 74. doi:10.1037/00223514.83.1.60 Tiedens, L. Z., & Linton, S. (2001). Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: The effects of specific emotions on information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 973988. doi:10.1037/00223514.81.6.973 Winkielman, P., & Berridge, K. C. (2004). Unconscious emotions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 151175. doi:10.1111/j.0963 7214.2004.00288.x Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C., & Wilbarger, J. L. (2005). Unconscious affective reactions to masked happy versus angry faces influence consumption behavior and judgments of value. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 121135. doi:10.1177/0146167204271309 Yap, A. J., & Tong, E. M. W. (2009). The appraisal rebound effect: Cognitive appraisals on the rebound. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1208 1219. doi:10.1177/0146167209338073 Zajonc, R. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologists, 35, 151175. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.35.2.151 Zemack-Rugar, Y., Bettman, J. R., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2007). The effects of nonconsciously priming emotion concepts on behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 927939. doi:10.1037/0022 3514.93.6.927

(Appendix follows)

922

YANG AND TONG

Appendix A Facial Primes Used in Experiments 1 and 2

Appendix B Hypothetical Events Used in Experiments 1 and 2

Your personal belongings were lost while travelling overseas.1 You did not do as well in a graded assignment as you expected.1,2 The night out with your date went badly.1,2 Your team members met each other for the first time, but you could not contribute to the conversation.1,2 You bought a product you did not really need.1,2 You had a quarrel with a loved one (family member/friend).1,2 You lost contact with your friend.1,2 You missed a movie that you wanted to watch.1 You did not get along with your team mate.1,2 Your contribution to your work went unrecognized.1,2 You had extra allowances for the month.2 You found a book you always wanted.2 A very bad habit of yours was kicked.2 You received a treat from your friend.2 You did a project that was highly praised.2 You were nominated as the leader of a group project.2 A cold war with your good friend finally ended.2 1 Events used in Experiment 1. 2 events used in Experiment 2. Received December 28, 2009 Revision received April 20, 2010 Accepted May 3, 2010