![]() ![]() ![]() Those closest to us, such as our romantic partners, invoke strong feelings on both ends of the spectrum-some days, thoughts of our romantic partners may leave us awash with love and admiration other days, we may feel dislike or even repulsion. Thus, people feel both positively and negatively toward those they love. ![]() (Note: The bars on the left side of the graph show the typical response using positive and negative objects, such as sunsets and spiders, where positive objects only affect positive target words and negative objects only affect negative target words.) These were significant others toward whom participants reported feeling very positively and not very negatively, yet these findings show that at an implicit level, people hold both positive and negative feelings toward the ones they love. The effect for positive words was larger, but there was a small effect showing that thinking about their significant others actually boosted people’s responses when categorizing negative words like garbage and cancer. But they were also quicker to categorize negative words. The bars on the right show that, as expected, participants were quicker to categorize positive words after seeing their significant other’s name. Still with me? Great, because here is where it gets interesting. This task allows researchers to actually quantify people’s feelings towards their significant others, by calculating how quickly they respond to positive words and negative words after seeing their significant other’s name. Likewise, if we are thinking about something unpleasant, we will be slower to categorize positive words and quicker for negative ones. Here’s how our brains work, as revealed by decades of psychological research: If we are thinking about something pleasant when a positive word pops up, we are quicker to categorize it as positive but when a negative word pops up, we are slower to put it in the negative category. Their job was to categorize the target words as positive or negative as quickly as possible by pushing the correct button. They’d see the name of their significant other pop up on the computer screen, which was then was quickly followed by a target word that was either positive (e.g., lucky, kitten) or negative (e.g., garbage, cancer). How? Participants did a standard computer task that measures how quickly they respond to certain directions. Unsurprisingly, people reported highly positive feelings and very low negative feelings toward the person they had chosen.īut then the researchers assessed implicit feelings-the emotions they might not be consciously aware of-about the significant other. Then, the participants reported on their positive and negative feelings toward that person. How did Zayas and Shoda find the hate in the midst of love? They asked study participants to think of a significant other they like very much. ![]()
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