The Effect of Perception Biases on Associated Value of Stimuli

Negative and positive stimuli appear to have their own unique effects on mood, behavior, and even underlying perceptions. Previous experiments have shown that people have the tendency to focus more on negative stimuli than positive; this is referred to as the “negativity effect”. The present study examined this bias, as well as the level of truth that people associate with positive or negative stimuli. In this experiment, students were split into groups and given either a “positive” or “negative” news article to read. Then, they were presented with two scenarios consisting of professors providing either “negative” or “positive” feedback to their students, and were asked to choose which option they believed to be the most truthful. It was predicted that, since people appear to hold a “negativity bias”, a greater percentage of the participants primed with the “negative” news story (versus those exposed to the “positive” news story) would choose the “negative” feedback as being more truthful. Unfortunately, the data did not reveal results significant enough to support the hypothesis, but there did appear to be an interesting trend. Very few from the negative condition chose the negative option, while almost a third of those in the positive condition chose the negative option. Thus, it appears that positive and negative stimuli do have their own unique effects, even if it isn’t in the way that is expected