Emotion Congruence in Perception

Previous tests of emotion congruence in perception have failed to find that stimulus events in the visual field that match an individual's emotional state are perceived more efficiently than other stimuli. The present research examined unidimensional (valence) congruence and multidimensional (categorical) emotion congruence in perception. The former hypothesis, which has guided most past work on this problem, holds that stimuli that match the valence of the perceiver's emotional state will be perceived more efficiently than other stimuli. The latter hypothesis states that stimuli that match the perceiver's emotional state in a more specific way will be perceived more efficiently than other stimuli. In two experiments, subjects were induced to feel happy or sad and then performed a lexical decision task. In both experiments, emotions facilitated lexical decision about words specifically related to subjects' emotional states. Effects of emotion on perception of valence-congruent stimuli were not observed.