Does priming negative emotions really contribute to more positive aesthetic judgments? A comparative study of emotion priming paradigms using emotional faces versus emotional scenes and multiple negative emotions with fEMG.

An outstanding question in empirical aesthetics concerns whether negative emotions (e.g., fear, disgust) can improve aesthetic judgments of liking. Although negative emotions are sometimes linked with enjoyment in music or visual design/art, emotion priming studies have shown conflicting results, reporting both more negative and more positive assessments. These divergences may be driven by key differences in priming procedures. Specifically, past studies' use of either emotional faces or emotional scenes as primes as well as differing negative emotion content (fear, disgust) may involve differing processes leading to opposing effects, particularly in aesthetic judgments. To differentiate among these, we presented emotion primes (20 ms) consisting of either emotional faces or scenes, further subdivided in disgusting, fearful, neutral, or positive emotional content and tested how liking, valence, and arousal ratings of abstract patterns were affected. Additionally, facial electromyography (fEMG) over M. frontalis (indicator of fear), M. levator labii (disgust), and M. zygomaticus (positive) muscles was recorded, to see whether primes would elicit prime-emotion congruent changes. However, fEMG activations indicated no prime congruent changes. Critically, primes influenced ratings in an emotion congruent manner in both faces and emotional scenes. Stimuli were rated as more liked and positively valenced after positive primes and less liked/more negatively valenced after fear or disgust primes. The similarity of priming effects in both prime types in absence of congruent fEMG changes may suggest that priming exerts its influence via a cognitive rather than a more immediate emotional route. Overall-at least in emotional priming-negative emotions seem to be incompatible with higher liking.