Psychophysiological responses to affective stimuli in high, moderate, and low socialized students

Abstract

Psychophysiological responses (e.g. startle blink magnitude and ERPs) have demonstrated sensitivity to individual differences in humans (e.g. Patrick, Bradley, & Lang, 1993), as well as discriminating between the valence and arousal qualities of affective stimuli such as photographs depicting varying emotional content. The present study examines startle blink responses and event-related potential (ERP) measures in students, selected based on their level of socialization, as they viewed 54 slides that fell into one of three affective categories (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant). Results supported a slightly modified version of a theory suggesting that attentional processes are modified by the affective environment (Cuthbert et al., (2000)). Results did not support hypotheses predicting that low socialized individuals would respond to affective stimuli in much the same way as true psychopaths do.