This study examined how the order and emotional tone (positive or negative) of stimuli presented to participants influenced their judgments of a subsequent neutral statement. Participants were randomly assigned to view a slideshow with either a positive or negative stimulus first or last, followed by neutral stimuli and a statement. Researchers predicted the statement would be rated more positively by those who saw a positive versus negative stimulus last. The study aimed to understand how emotional and order effects shape neutral evaluations.

1. Debriefing Form
Project Title: Understanding Neutrality of a Situation
Negative information tends to more strongly influence people’s impressions of others
more than positive information. Additionally, the order in which certain information is
placed also influences how likely people are in remembering that information. Studies
have shown, for example, that people will focus more on a political candidate’s
weaknesses than the candidate’s strengths when deciding for which candidate to cast a
vote. They have also shown that people are more likely to remember information from
the beginning and end of a list rather than in the middle.
In this study, we wanted to see whether exposure to either a negative or positive
emotional stimulus and the order in which that stimulus was presented would influence
how people judge a neutral situation (statement). In order to this, participants were
randomly assigned to view one of four different slideshows. Each participant also
received a packet containing a neutral statement and questionnaire. Two of the conditions
contained a positive emotional stimulus, with one condition viewing the stimulus before a
set of neutral stimuli, and another condition viewing the positive emotional stimulus after
the set of neutral stimuli. The other two conditions replicated this pattern, but the positive
emotional stimulus was replaced with a negative emotional stimulus.
We predict that participants receiving a positive emotional stimulus will rate the neutral
statement as more positive than those receiving the negative stimulus, and that the
emotional stimulus viewed at the end of the set of neutral stimuli would have a greater
influence on the judgment of the neutral statement than the emotional stimulus viewed at
the beginning of the set of neutral stimuli. Therefore, the participants viewing a positive
emotional stimulus are expected to rate the neutral statement in a more positive manner
than those viewing a negative emotional stimulus.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to ask the researcher now. If you have
further questions or comments, please contact Karen Schmidt at
kschimdt@virginia.edu. Because other students may be participating in this study in the
future, we ask that you not discuss the details of this study with your friends or
classmates.
If you are interested in reading more about this topic, try the following:
Roediger, H.L. III.,& Crowder R.G. (1976). A serial position effect in recall of United
States presidents. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 8, 275-278.
Klein, Jill. (1991). Negativity effects in impression formation: a test in the political
arena. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 412-418.
Thank you for your participation!