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Abstract

We investigated whether affective integration increases the speed of processing of personality trait knowledge. The fan effect was compared between cases where trait knowledge is stored with the affective value and cases where it is not stored with the affective value. 18 college students first memorized a set of traits about fictitious individuals and then made recognition judgments. In the 2 × 2 factorial repeated-measures design, the number of traits learned about a fictitious individual and whether those traits were integrated by a shared affective value were manipulated. The significant interaction showed that knowledge of personality trait with affective integration was processed quickly even if the particular person's memory had rich connections with traits.

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Affective Integration Speeds Trait Processing

Abstract

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