Effects of Type and Relevance of Primes and Delay between Priming and Ratings on Attractiveness

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Abstract
This study was an attempt to generalize a previous finding on prime effects on perceived attractiveness. After the 80 college men were shown a list of 10 primes and then asked to read a passage about a fictitious female named Victoria, they rated her attractiveness on 5 scales. Primes were either positive or negative. Half of the primes were relevant to attractiveness and half were not. Some subjects rated Victoria right after being primed while others waited 5 min. between priming and rating. A 2 (prime type) × 2 (relevance of prime) × 2 (time) factorial analysis of variance gave a significant interaction between prime type and relevance. Subjects exposed to negative relevant primes rated Victoria more attractive than subjects exposed to negative irrelevant primes. An inhibitory effect of the primes, given the long length of their exposure, seemed to be the basis for these findings.

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