The emotion-specific priming effects of negatively valenced emotions (anger, sadness, and fear) were demonstrated in a divided attention task. After an emotional prime, subjects were simultaneously exposed to target displays portraying two different negative emotions. Target emotions congruent with the primed emotion were judged as more intense. Emotive priming did not increase recognition for affectively congruent target displays that were actually presented, but priming effects appeared on recognition for displays not actually seen. Emotively congruent displays that had not been presented were falsely recognized, where as emotively incongruent displays that had not been seen were correctly reported as not recognized. The results indicated that emotional congruence effects seemed to emerge from the increased probability that congruent behaviors were schematically processed whereas controlled attentional processing resources were reserved for emotively incongruent behaviors.
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