Article
Cacioppo, J. T., Crites, S. L. J., & Gardner, W. L. (1996). Attitudes to the right: Evaluative processing is associated with lateralized late positive event-related brain potentials. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(12), 1205-1219. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/stephen_crites/14
Publication Date
January 1996
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume
221
Issue
12
Abstract
The authors recently developed a paradigm to investigate the evaluative categorization stage of attitudes using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The present series of 5 studies with a total of 118 Ss extended this approach by analyzing the spatial topography of the ERP over the lateral scalp region to address complementary questions regarding the nature of operations underlying the evaluative categorization stage of attitude processing. Consistent with the hypothesis that evaluative categorizations engage mechanisms associated with hedonic or global language processing, results revealed that the standardized amplitudes of the late positive potential of the ERP during evaluative categorization were larger over the right than the left scalp region, whereas nonevaluative categorizations were associated with a symmetrically distributed ERP across the left and right scalp regions.