Early attentional bias for negative words when competition is induced

Previous research (Zeelenberg, Wagenmakers, & Rotteveel, 2006) revealed that emotionally meaningful words were identified significantly better than neutral words, with no difference between positive and negative words. Since in that study only a single target word was displayed at a time, we hypothesized that the equivalent performances for positive and negative words were due to a lack of competition. To test this, in our Experiment 1, we replicated Zeelenberg and colleagues’ finding, using emotion-laden Chinese words and the identical data-limited method, which measured the accuracy of a briefly shown target. We then introduced competition in Experiment 2 by simultaneously presenting two words during the target frame, and found evidence for an early attentional bias to negative words. In Experiment 3, we confirmed that the bias in Experiment 2 was not due to the inevitable repetition of stimuli. Taken together, these results support our hypothesis that, in the presence of competition, negative words receive attentional priority and consequently have enhanced perceptual representations.