Do Both Negative and Positive Environmental Scenes Elicit Rapid Affective Processing?

A priming paradigm was used to investigate the automatic affective reaction triggered by perception of environmental scenes. Grayscale pictures of environmental scenes differing in the level of restorativeness and preference (low, medium, high) were presented as prime stimuli. The prime stimuli were followed by presentations of human facial expressions of happiness and anger as to-be-recognized target stimuli. The results showed that response times to angry faces were shorter after the presentation of negative scenes compared to positive. A reverse pattern of results was true for the response times to happy faces. As compared to the response times after baseline primers (scenes with medium restorativeness/preference), only negative scenes seemed to result in facilitation of responses to facial expressions of anger. No such facilitation was observed for expressions of happiness after positive environmental primers. The results provide preliminary support for the view that only negative environmental scenes elicit an automatic evaluative reaction.