Affective Habituation: Subliminal Exposure to Extreme Stimuli Decreases Their Extremity

Following a functional perspective on evaluation, the authors hypothesized that subliminal exposure to extreme stimuli (e. g., extremely negative or positive words) would lead these stimuli to be perceived as less extreme. This process-affective habituation-was tested in 4 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were subliminally exposed to extremely positive and extremely negative words. In a subsequent explicit-judgment task, these words were rated as less extreme than extreme words that had not been presented. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated with an implicit evaluation measure. In Experiments 3 and 4, subliminal exposure to extreme positive and negative words made the words behave as words that are only moderately positive or negative. Several implications are discussed.