A count of the relative incidence of letters in 431 pleasant (P) words and 702 unpleasant (U) words revealed that some letters tend to occur more frequently in the initial position of P words and other letters more frequently in the initial position of U words. A task requiring Ss to guess for each letter whether it occurred in a P word or in a U word showed that people are able to approximate these objective probabilities of initial-letter occurrence. These findings can explain how it is possible to identify the probable affective meaning of a word seen in a tachistoscope prior to its complete recognition. Faster recognition of P words in tachistoscopic experiments was accounted for in terms of response probability. {\textcopyright} 1969 Academic Press Inc. All rights reserved.
Ss were told that two equally large groups of words had been chosen from a dictionary. One group contained “Pleasant words-words which have pleasant connotations, which bring pleasant thoughts, associations, and memories to mind-for example, words sweet, unselfish, and successful.” The other group contained “Unpleasant words, like sour, selfish, and unsuccessful.” (For alternate Ss, the order of introduction of the concepts of “plesant” and “upleasant” words was reversed.)
No citing papers are currently in WordNorms