Black and White as Valence Cues
A Large-Scale Replication Effort of Meier, Robinson, and Clore (2004)
Abstract
Replication efforts involving large samples are recommended in helping to determine the reliability of an effect. This approach was taken for a study from Meier, Robinson, and Clore (2004), one of the first papers in social cognition guided by conceptual metaphor theory, which reported that evaluations were faster when word valence metaphorically matched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in black) rather than mismatched (e.g., a word with a negative meaning in white) font color. The present investigation was a direct large-scale replication attempt involving 980 participants who completed an experiment using web-based software and were diverse in terms of race, age, and geographical location. Words with a positive meaning were evaluated faster when font color was white rather than black and words with a negative meaning were evaluated faster when font color was black rather than white, replicating the main results of Meier et al. (2004).
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