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Freeze or Flee? Negative Stimuli Elicit Selective Responding
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Estes, Zachary; Verges, Michelle – Cognition, 2008
Humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli. A consequence of this automatic vigilance for negative valence is that negative words elicit slower responses than neutral or positive words on a host of cognitive tasks. Some researchers have speculated that negative stimuli elicit a general suppression of motor activity, akin to the freezing…
Descriptors: Stimuli, Evaluative Thinking, Reaction Time, Emotional Response