COGNITION AND EMO TION, 1998, 1 2 (1), 45± 61

A n A ffec tiv e V a rian t of the S im o n P aradigm

Jan De Houwer and Paul Eelen

U n iv ersity o f L eu ven , B elg iu m

In this paper, we introduce an affective variant of the Simon paradigm. Three

experiments are reported in which nouns and adjectives with a positive,
negative, or neutral affective meaning were used as stimuli. Depending on
the grammatical category of the presented word (i.e. noun or adjective),
participants had to respond as fast as possible by saying a predetermined
positive or negative word. In Experiments 1 and 2, the words POSITIVE and
NEGATIVE were required as responses, in Experiment 3, FLOWER and
CANCER were used as response words. Despite the fact that participants
were explicitly instructed to ignore the affective meaning of the presented
words, reaction times were faster when the affective connotation of the
presented word and the correct response was the same than when it dif-
fered. The results lend further support to the hypothesis that stimulus valence
can be processed automatically. We also argue that the affective Simon
paradigm can be used as a ¯ exible tool for the study of affective-processing
and discuss how other variants of the Simon paradigm can be developed to
stimulate research on other aspects of information-processing.

INTRODUCTION
The Simon paradigm (Simon, 1990; Simon & Rudell, 1967) typically
involves asking participants to make a spatial response based on the
identity of a nonspatial stimulus feature. Importantly, the relevant stimulus
is presented lateralised. Despite the fact that the spatial location of the
relevant stimulus is irrelevant, it is commonly observed that responses are
faster when the spatial position of the stimulus corresponds to the spatial
features of the response that has to be made. For instance, participants
might be asked to press the left key of a button-press device on presentation
of a red light and the right key on presentation of a green light, irrespective

Requests for reprints should be sent to Jan De Houwer, Department of Psychology,

University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium; e-mail: Jan.DeHouwer
@psy.kuleuven.ac.be.
We thank Frank Baeyens, Dirk Hermans, Omer Van den Bergh, Peter Silverans, Lee Ryan,
and an anonymous revie wer for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. Jan De
Houwer is a Research Assistant for the National Fund for Scienti® c Research (Belgium).

Ó 1998 Psychology Press Ltd

46 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

of whether the light is presented on the left or right side of a visual display.
In this case, responses to the red light will be faster when it is presented on
the left side of the display than when it is presented on the right side.
Responses to the green light will be faster when presented on the right side
(e.g. Craft & Simon, 1970).
At an abstract level, three elements play an important role within the
Simon paradigm: (1) a relevant feature that determines what the correct
response should be (e.g. the colour of the light); (2) an irrelevant feature
that has to be ignored (e.g. the spatial location of the light); and (3) a
response (e.g. pressing the left or right key). Studies using the Simon
paradigm have shown that under certain conditions, the irrelevant feature
in¯ uences response times and accuracy. If the irrelevant feature has an
effect, it must have been processed. Because participants were instructed to
ignore the irrelevant feature, it can be inferred that the processing of the
feature was involuntary and in that sense automatic 1 (Bargh, 1992; Jacoby,
1991).
A number of other paradigms have also been used to demonstrate and
explore the effects of irrelevant features of a stimulus display on task
performance. For instance, Stroop (1935) observed that the time to name
the ink colour in which a word was written increased if the word itself
denoted a colour different from the ink colour (e.g. the word GREEN
written in red ink). As is the case in the Simon paradigm, the Stroop
paradigm involves a relevant feature (i.e. the ink colour), an irrelevant
feature (i.e. word meaning), and a response (i.e. colour-naming). Kornblum
(1992; Kornblum & Lee, 1995) pointed out that the Simon paradigm differs
from the Stroop and other ir re le va n t fe a tu re p a ra d ig m s in the way the three
crucial elements are related. The essential characteristic of the Simon
paradigm is that the irrelevant feature is meaningfully related to the
response that has to be made, whereas the relevant feature is not mean-
ingfully related to either the response or the irrelevant feature. In the case
of spatial Simon paradigms, the irrelevant feature (e.g. left or right pre-
sentation of a stimulus) and the response (e.g. left or right keypress) are
related because they both incorporate spatial information. There is no such
similarity or overlap (Kornblum, 1992) between the relevant feature (e.g.
colour of the light) and the response or the irrelevant feature. In a Stroop

1
Originally, automatic processes were regarded as unitary. A process could either be
automatic or controlled, and all automatic processes were assumed to show the same set of
characteristics. Contrary to this ``all or none’’ view on automaticity (e.g. Posner & Snyder,
1975; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977) recent views (e.g. Bargh, 1992; Logan, 1985) stress that
different types of automatic processes may exist, each with different characteristics. In the
light of these recent views, we specify the way in which a process can be regarded as
automatic.
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 47
paradigm, however, the relevant feature (e.g. ink colour) is meaningfully
related to both the response (e.g. colour-naming) and the irrelevant feature
(e.g. word meaning).
When the core elements of the Simon paradigm are understood, it
becomes clear that the paradigm is very ¯ exible. One can alter the stimuli
that are used, the way the stimuli are presented, and the task instructions.
Importantly, the paradigm also allows the implementation of different
types of relations between the irrelevant feature and the response. Never-
theless, virtually all studies with the Simon paradigm have focused on a
spatial relation between the irrelevant feature and the response (see Korn-
blum & Lee, 1995, for an exception). In the experiments reported here, we
implemented an affective 2 relation between the irrelevant feature and the
response. We presented nouns and adjectives with a positive, negative, or
neutral affective connotation and asked participants to attend to the gram-
matical status of the presented words. Participants had to respond with
either a positive word or a negative word, depending on whether a noun or
adjective was presented. As such, the relevant feature was the grammatical
category to which a word belonged, the irrelevant feature was the affective
connotation of the word, and the required response was a predetermined
positive or negative word. Because the irrelevant feature and the response
both specify affective information, they are meaningfully related, whereas
the relevant feature is not meaningfully related to the response or irrelevant
feature. Our paradigm can therefore be regarded as an affective Simon
paradigm.
Studies using the spatial Simon paradigm have provided a major con-
tribution to our understanding of the processing of spatial information (see
Lu & Proctor, 1995, and Simon, 1990, for a review). Likewise, an affective
Simon paradigm would be a useful tool for enhancing our understanding of
the processing and representation of affect, a topic that rightfully regained
the interest of cognitive psychologists (e.g. Kitayama & Howard, 1994;
Niedenthal & Halberstadt, 1995; Pratto, 1994). If an affective Simon effect
can be observed under certain conditions, it tells us that the affective
connotation of the stimuli was processed under those conditions. One
can then examine which conditions need to be satis® ed in order to observe
an affective Simon effect. This can inform us about the conditions under
which affective-processing can occur. Because the affective Simon para-
digm is very ¯ exible, it would provide researchers with many new and
alternative ways to study affective-processing.

2
The words ``affect’’ and ``affective’’ are meant to refer to the valenc e of stimuli in terms
of the basic dimension that is described by words such as ``positive-negative’’ , ``good-bad’ ’ ,
``like-dislike’ ’ .
48 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

The main aim of the present research was to establish that reliable
affective Simon effects can be observed. However, the experiments also
have direct theoretical implications. Most cognitive theories of emotion
and affect assume that the affective valence of stimuli can be processed
automatically (e.g. Lazarus, 1991; Sherer, 1993; O È hman, 1987). Some
recent evidence supports this assumption (see Pratto, 1994, and Hermans,
1996, for a review). For instance, in affective priming studies it has been
found that the processing of a positively or negatively valenced target is
facilitated when it is preceded by a similarly valenced prime compared to
when the prime has the opposite valence. Affective priming effects have
been observed: (1) when the interval between the prime and target is short
(i.e. 300msec or less) but not when it is long (i.e. more than 300msec) (e.g.
Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Hermans, De Houwer, &
Eelen, 1994; Klauer, Rossnagel, & Musch, 1997); (2) when participants are
explicitly instructed to ignore the primes (e.g. Bargh, Chaiken, Govender,
& Pratto, 1992; Hermans et al., 1994); and (3) even when any reference
towards the valence of the targets and the primes is avoided (e.g. Bargh et
al., 1992; Bargh, Chaiken, R aymond, & Hymes, 1996; Hermans et al.,
1994). Based on these results, it can be concluded that affective-
processing of the primes was automatic in the sense of (a) fast and
ef® cient, (b) involuntary, and (c) goal-independent (Bargh, 1992; Bargh
et al., 1992, 1996; Hermans et al., 1994). Evidence for automatic affective-
processing has also been obtained using variants of the Stroop paradigm
(e.g. De Houwer & Hermans, 1994; Pratto & John, 1991). For instance,
Pratto and John (1991; Pratto, 1994) presented words corresponding to
positive or negative personality traits in different colours. Participants were
instructed to name the colour in which a word appeared as rapidly as
possible. Results showed that participants needed more time to name the
colour of a negative compared to a positive word. Because the valence of
the word was irrelevant to the primary task, it can be concluded that
stimulus valence was processed automatically in the sense of involuntary
and ef® ciently (Pratto, 1994). The experiments reported in the present
paper might provide additional evidence for the hypothesis that stimuli
can be evaluated automatically. In the present experiments, stimulus
valence was irrelevant with regard to the main task and participants were
even explicitly asked to ignore the affective meaning of the presented
stimuli. If it is found that the affective meaning nevertheless interferes
with task performance, it can be concluded that the stimuli were processed
involuntarily and thus automatically (Bargh, 1992; Jacoby, 1991).
Three experiments are reported. In Experiment 1, nouns and adjectives
with a positive (e.g. FRIEND and HONEST), negative (e.g. CANCER and
STUPID), or neutral (e.g. PAPER and NORMAL) affective connotation
were presented. Based on the grammatical category, participants had to
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 49
respond with the words POSITIVE or NEGATIVE. Experiment 2 was
identical to Experiment 1, except that no neutral words were used and
instructions emphasised more strongly that the affective connotation of the
nouns and adjectives should be ignored. Experiment 3 was a replication of
Experiment 2 but now participants had to respond with the words
FLOWER or CANCER.

EXPERIMENT 1

Method
Re se a rc h Pa rticip a n ts. Seventeen second-year psychology students
(11 females, 6 males) participated in order to partially ful® l course require-
ments. As in the following experiments, all participants had normal or
corrected to normal vision and all were native Dutch-speakers.

Ma te ria ls. Based on the normative study of Hermans and De Houwer

(1994) in which 145 Dutch-speaking psychology students were asked to
judge the affective connotation and subjective familiarity of 370 nouns and
370 adjectives on a 1 (negative) to 7 (positive) scale, 10 positive (mean
rating in the normative study = 6.00; SD = .40), 10 neutral ( M = 4.11; SD =
.13), and 10 negative ( M = 1.73; SD = .27) nouns and 10 positive ( M = 5.93;
SD = .26), 10 neutral (M = 4.24; SD = .43), and 10 negative ( M = 1.83; SD
= .28) adjectives were selected. We made sure that nouns and adjectives
did not differ on their mean word length [ F (1, 58) < 1] in order to prevent
participants from using word length rather than grammatical status as a cue
to respond. In addition, ® ve positive, ® ve neutral, and ® ve negative nouns
and adjectives were selected as practice stimuli based on the normative
study. Stimuli were presented on a 70Hz SVGA screen connected to an
IBM-compatible 486 computer. Words were presented in white upper-case
letters on a black background. A letter was 7mm high and 5mm wide. The
presentations were controlled by a Turbo Pascal 5.0 program that operated
in graphics mode. Participants were seated in front of the computer screen
at a distance of approximately 40cm. Verbal responses were registered by a
voice key that generated a signal that stopped a highly accurate (beyond
1msec) Turbo Pascal Timer (Bovens & Brysbaert, 1990).

Pro c e d u re . All participants were tested individually. Instructions on

the computer screen informed participants that nouns and adjectives would
be presented. Half of the participants were told to say the word POSITIVE
as fast as possible when a noun was presented and to respond with the word
NEGATIVE when an adjective was presented (Response Condition 1). The
50 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

other participants had to say NEGATIVE on presentation of a noun and

POSITIVE on presentation of an adjective (Response Condition 2). All
participants were instructed to ignore the meaning of the word. It is
important to note that the meaning of a word does not have to be processed
in order to determine its grammatical status. For instance, a simple non-
semantic strategy one could follow is to assess whether an article, such as
``an’’ , ``a’’ , or ``the’’ , can be placed in front of the presented word in a
meaningful way. Moreover, models of stimulus-processing that explicitly
deal with the representation of grammatical information about words
assume that such information is encoded and can thus be determined at a
pre-semantic level (e.g. Levelt, 1989; Roelofs, 1992).
Participants were informed that response times would be measured using
a voice key. In order for the voice key to register the responses correctly,
participants were asked to respond clearly and to avoid making other
sounds. They were told that 90 words would be presented and that there
would be a short break after every 30 words. It was also said that the ® rst
30 words served as practice trials. The number of practice trials is rather
large compared to studies in which participants have to name stimuli or
stimulus features such as colour (e.g. Pratto & John, 1991). In the present
experiments, however, the relation between the relevant stimulus feature
and the correct response is arbitrary. It might thus require more practice
before participants are familiarised with the task.
Each trial consisted of the following sequence of events: a warning tone
(1000Hz, 200msec), a ® xation cross (500msec), a blank screen (500msec),
and a word, which remained on the screen until the voice key registered a
response. If no response was registered, the word disappeared automati-
cally after 3000msec. All visual stimuli (® xation cross and word) were
presented in the centre of the computer screen. After each trial, the
experimenter entered a code into the computer that corresponded to the
response that was given, except on trials where the voice key failed to
register correctly the response, in which event a different code was entered.
The next trial was initiated 1500msec after the experimenter entered a
code. The entire experiment consisted of 90 trials and lasted less than 10
minutes. The 30 practice words were presented ® rst, followed by the 60
experimental words. Presentation order was randomised for each partici-
pant individually, with the restriction that no more than four words of the
same grammatical category could be presented consecutively.

D e si g n a n d An a lysis. Response Condition was manipulated between

subjects. For each participant, one-third of all nouns and adjectives had a
positive affective connotation, one-third had a neutral connotation, and
one-third had a negative connotation. Trials were grouped into congru-
ent, incongruent, and control trials. Congruent trials are trials on which the
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 51
affective connotation of the word corresponds to the affective connotation
of the response. In Response Condition 1, congruent trials are trials on
which a positive noun or a negative adjective is presented. In Response
Condition 2, trials on which a negative noun or a positive adjective is
presented, are congruent trials. In both Response Conditions, control trials
are trials on which the presented word has a neutral connotation. On
incongruent trials, the affective connotation of the word and the response
are opposite. This is the case in Response Condition 1 when negative nouns
and positive adjectives are presented and in Response Condition 2 when
positive nouns and negative adjectives are presented.
For each participant, we calculated the number of errors and the mean
reaction time on congruent, control, and incongruent trials. Trials on which
a voice key failure occurred were not taken into account. Reaction times on
trials where an incorrect response was given, were also discarded. The
means were analysed using an ANOVA with Congruence (3 levels) as
within-subjects variable. The signi® cance level was set at P < .05.

Results and Discussion

One participant made 10 errors (16.67% of all experimental trials), which
exceeded the mean number of errors ( M = 2.50: SD = 2.48) by more than 3
standard deviations. The data of this participant were replaced by the data
of an additional participant. Voice key failures occurred on 3.33% of the
trials and 3.42% errors were made on the remaining trials.
The analysis of mean reaction times revealed a signi® cant main effect of
Congruence [ F (2, 30) = 9.74; MSe = 2111.23]. A Tukey HSD test showed
that reaction times were faster on congruent ( M = 759; SD = 125) than on
control ( M = 814; SD = 113) and incongruent ( M = 825; SD = 144) trials.
Incongruent and control trials did not differ signi® cantly. The number of
incorrect responses was not signi® cantly different on congruent ( M = .37;
SD = .80), control ( M = .69; SD = .79), and incongruent ( M = .94; SD =
1.00) trials [ F (2, 30) = 1.63; MSe = .78].
The present study provides the ® rst demonstration of an affective Simon
effect. Reaction times were faster when the affective connotation of the
presented word and the response was the same compared to when it
differed, despite the fact that participants were asked to use the gramma-
tical category of the word as a cue to respond and to ignore its meaning.
Results thus show that the affective meaning of the words was processed
involuntarily and in that sense automatically.
One could argue that the observed effect occurred because participants
did not try hard enough to ignore the affective meaning of the words.
Indeed, the instructions put little emphasis on the fact the affective con-
notation of the word should be ignored. It was mentioned only brie¯ y that
52 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

the meaning of the words should be ignored. Participants were not warned
that some words would have a clear positive or negative meaning and that
the affective meaning of the words could in some cases be opposite to the
affective meaning of the required response. Moreover, on most trials there
was no con¯ ict between the affective meaning of the word and the
response. On one-third of the trials, the words had a neutral meaning,
and in half of the remaining trials, the affective meaning of the word
and the response was identical. It was, therefore, most often not necessary
to ignore affective meaning of the words. As a consequence, participants
might have invested little effort in trying to do so.
We therefore conducted a second experiment in which participants were
warned that words would have a positive or negative connotation and were
explicitly instructed to ignore the affective connotation of the words. A
second difference with Experiment 1 was that no neutral words were
presented, so that each participant was given an equal number of congru-
ent and incongruent trials. Both elements should encourage participants to
actively avoid processing of the valence of the words. A ® nal difference
was that the experimental words were presented twice in a blocked manner.
This enabled us to examine whether the affective Simon effect persists
after practice or whether participants can eventually learn to ignore the
affective connotation of the words.

EXPERIMENT 2

Method
Re se a rc h Pa rtic ip a n ts. Sixteen ® rst-year psychology students (11
females, 5 males) participated for partial ful® lment of course requirements.

Ma ter ia ls a n d Pro c e d u re . Experiments 1 and 2 were identical except

on the following points. In Experiment 2, no neutral words were presented,
reducing the number of words to 20 practice and 40 experimental words.
Half of the practice and experimental words had a positive connotation,
half had a negative connotation. These positive and negative words were
the same as those used in Experiment 1. Practice stimuli were presented
once at the beginning of the experiment. After a break, all experimental
stimuli were presented, and following a second break, the experimental
stimuli were presented again. The order in which the stimuli were pre-
sented was randomised for each participant and for each block separately
with the restriction that no more than three words of the same grammatical
category could be presented consecutively. A ® nal difference with Experi-
ment 1 was that participants were now told that the nouns and adjectives
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 53
would have either a positive or negative affective connotation. It was also
emphasised more strongly that the affective connotation of the words
should be ignored.

An a lysis. We calculated for each participant the mean reaction time

and the number of errors on congruent and incongruent experimental trials,
separately for the ® rst and second half of the experiment. Trials on which a
voice key failure occurred were ignored. Reaction times on trials where an
incorrect response was given, were also not taken into account. Means were
analysed using an ANOVA with Block (2 levels) and Congruence (2 levels)
as within-subjects variables.

Results and Discussion

Voice key failures occurred on 5.08% of the trials. Incorrect responses
were given on 6.58% of the remaining trials. Table 1 presents the mean
reaction times and mean number of errors on the congruent and incon-
gruent trials in the ® rst and second block. The ANOVA of mean reaction
time data revealed a signi® cant main effect of Congruence [ F (1, 15) =
7.34; MS e = 4653.10] resulting from faster responses on congruent than on
incongruent trials. The main effect of Block also reached signi® cance
[ F (1, 15) = 8.25; MSe = 2916.34], showing faster responses in the second
than in the ® rst block. The interaction between both variables did not reach
the predetermined signi® cance level, although the effect of Congruence
tended to be smaller in Block 2 than in Block 1 [ F (1, 15) = 4.33; MS e =
1305.39; P = .06]. The analysis of error data only revealed a main effect of
Block [ F (1, 15) = 7.29; MSe = .48] and no effect of Congruence or
interaction between Block and Congruence [ F (1, 15) < 1, for both tests] .
The present study replicated the affective Simon effect found in Experi-
ment 1. Importantly, the effect was obtained despite the explicit instruction

TABLE 1
Mean Reaction Times and Mean Number of Errors on
Congruent and Incongruent Trials (Standard Deviations are
in Parentheses) in Blocks 1 and 2 of Experiment 2

C o n g ru e n t In c o n g ru e n t

Blo c k 1
Reaction time 723 (147) 788 (166)
Errors 1.44 (1.42) 1.50 (1.21)
Blo c k 2
Reaction time 703 (125) 731 (148)
Errors .81 (1.05) 1.19 (.98)
54 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

to ignore the affective connotation of the words. Moreover, if participants

wanted to perform well on the task, it was important to ignore the affective
connotation of the words because words and responses had opposite
affective connotations on half of the trials. Because an affective Simon
effect was nevertheless observed, it can be concluded that the affective
meaning of the words was processed involuntarily. The interaction between
Congruence and Block showed a tendency for the affective Simon effect to
become smaller with practice. This result will be discussed later.
In Experiments 1 and 2, the words POSITIVE and NEGATIVE were
used as responses. These response words are not arbitrary positive and
negative words. The words POSITIVE and NEGATIVE are used as
category labels for the set of affectively valenced (positive or negative)
concepts or stimuli. Related to this, POSITIVE and NEGATIVE are
adjectives that provide a description of the affective characteristics of
stimuli. Therefore, stimulus and response words were not merely similar
or dissimilar with regard to their affective connotation but also with regard
to whether the response word provided a correct category label for, or
affective description of, the stimulus word. This raises the question
whether an affective Simon effect can be observed even if response words
are used that differ on their affective connotation but are not used to
describe or label other (positive or negative) concepts. We examined the
question in Experiment 3, where participants had to respond with the Dutch
words BLOEM (FLOWER) or KANKER (CANCER) based on the gram-
matical category of a presented stimulus word while ignoring the affective
connotation of the stimulus word. Both response words are not used as
affective descriptors. We also tried to select stimulus words that had no
obvious semantic relation with the response words apart from an affective
relation. Therefore, the stimulus and response words can be assumed to be
similar or dissimilar only with respect to their affective connotation.

EXPERIMENT 3

Method
Re se a rc h Pa r tic ip a n ts. Eleven ® rst-year economics students (6
females, 5 males) and 5 ® rst-year psychology students (4 females, 1
male) participated in this experiment. Economics students volunteered,
and psychology students participated for partial ful® lment of course
requirements.

Ma ter ia ls , Pro c e d u re , a n d An a lysis. Twenty-two of the positive and

negative words used in Experiments 1 and 2 that could somehow be
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 55
considered to be meaningfully related to the response words FLOWER and
CANCER (e.g. GIFT, ILLNESS, BURIAL, HAPPY, CRUEL) were
replaced by other, similarly valenced words. As in Experiment 2, no
neutral words were presented. Half of the participants were instructed to
say the Dutch word BLOEM (FLOWER) on presentation of a noun, and the
word KANKER (CANCER) on presentation of an adjective. Response
instructions were reversed for the other participants. In all other respects,
this experiment was identical to Experiment 2.

Results and Discussion

Voice key failures occurred on 3.44% of all trials. Incorrect responses were
given on 6.96% of the remaining trials. Table 2 presents the relevant mean
reaction time and error data. Mean reaction time data again showed faster
responses on congruent than on incongruent trials [ F (1, 15) = 5.95; MSe =
1617.22] . The main effect of Block was also signi® cant [ F (1, 15) = 30.25;
MS e = 3833.05] with faster responses in the second than in the ® rst block.
Both variables did not interact [ F (1, 15) < 1]. An ANOVA of the error data
only revealed a marginally signi® cant effect of Congruence [ F (1, 15) =
3.79; MSe = 2.00; P = .08] with a tendency for fewer errors on congruent
than on incongruent trials [ F < 1 for all other effects].
We again observed an affective Simon effect even though: (1) partici-
pants were explicitly instructed to ignore the affective connotation of the
stimulus words; and (2) stimulus and response words were only similar or
dissimilar with regard to their affective connotation. Results also showed
that the affective Simon effect did not diminish with practice. In Experi-
ment 2, however, the effect did tend to become smaller after practice. We
recently conducted an experiment (De Houwer, 1997) that included an
exact replication of Experiment 2 and observed that the effect remained
stable over two experimental blocks. Across studies, our ® ndings thus

TABLE 2
Mean Reaction Times and Number of Errors on Congruent
and Incongruent Trials (Standard Deviations are in
Parentheses) in Blocks 1 and 2 of Experiment 3

C o n g ru e n t In c o n g ru e n t

Blo c k 1
Reaction time 812 (142) 833 (146)
Errors 1.00 (.63) 1.87 (1.59)
Blo c k 2
Reaction Time 723 (137) 752 (123)
Errors 1.00 (.89) 1.50 (1.37)
56 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

suggest that the affective Simon effect is relatively resistant to effects of

practice.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
The core of the Simon paradigm is that participants have to respond to a
relevant feature of a stimulus display while ignoring an irrelevant feature
of the display that is related to the response (Kornblum, 1992). Whereas in
most studies using the Simon paradigm, the irrelevant feature and the
response are spatially related, we have introduced a variant in which
both elements are affectively related. Participants had to respond with a
positive or negative word depending on whether a noun or adjective was
presented. Results showed that reaction times depended on the affective
connotation of the presented nouns and adjectives, even though participants
were explicitly instructed to ignore the affective meaning of the words and
even though task performance would bene® t if the affective meaning of the
words could be ignored. An affective Simon effect was observed both when
participants had to respond with the words NEGATIVE and POSITIVE
(Experiments 1 and 2) and when the words FLOWER and CANCER were
used as response words (Experiment 3).
The affective Simon paradigm provides a ¯ exible and powerful tool to
study the processing and representation of affective information. The
paradigm allows the use of verbal and nonverbal stimuli of different
modalities and complexity, one can manipulate the identity of relevant
feature and the responses, sequential variants of the paradigm can be
created, and so on. This ¯ exibility can be used to examine the conditions
under which an affective Simon effect can be observed. Knowledge about
these conditions can guide the construction and evaluation of models of
affective-processing (e.g. De Houwer, 1997). At a more practical level, the
paradigm takes only little time and equipment to run and reliable effects
can be obtained with as few as 16 participants.
Do the present results support the hypothesis that stimuli can be auto-
matically evaluated? Some might argue that in order to determine the
grammatical category of the words, participants had to process intention-
ally the semantic meaning of the words. Assuming that the affective
valence of words is a part of their meaning, participants might thus have
also processed the valence of the stimuli intentionally. According to this
reasoning, our results do not show that stimulus valence was processed
automatically. However, the argument is incorrect on a number of points.
First of all, as was noted in the method section of Experiment 1, it is
certainly not the case that semantic-processing is necessary in order to
grammatically categorise words. But more importantly, even if participants
intentionally processed the meaning of the words, it is highly unlikely that
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 57
they also had the intention of evaluating the words. If participants have to
determine the grammatical category of a word, it can be assumed that they
only have the intention of trying to retrieve information that points to
actual grammatical category of the word. Although not necessarily so,
they might try to determine certain semantic properties of the words,
properties that are informative about its grammatical status. However,
knowledge about the valence of a word cannot facilitate a decision about
the grammatical category of the word because both stimulus features are
completely independent. If one additionally considers that participants
were explicitly instructed to ignore stimulus valence, it must be concluded
that participants had no intention of evaluating the words but rather tried to
avoid processing of stimulus valence. The results thus show that although
participants were looking for (either semantic or nonsemantic) information
about the grammatical category of a word, they also unintentionally
retrieved information about the valence of the word. Therefore, one must
conclude that stimulus evaluation was automatic.
However, it is possible that the automatic activation of stimulus valence
was due to the fact that participants were intentionally looking for semantic
information. One might thus argue that because the meaning of the words
mig h t have been processed intentionally, our results do not warrant the
conclusion that automatic stimulus evaluation can occur when there is no
intention of processing words semantically. However, this merely quali® es
our conclusion that affective-processing was automatic. One might wonder
whether affective-processing was automatic in the sense that it did not
require intentional semantic-processing, but it must be clear that our
studies demonstrate that affective-processing was automatic in the sense
of being involuntary and ef® cient (Bargh, 1992; Jacoby, 1991; Pratto,
1994). It is interesting to note that in more recent affective Simon experi-
ments (De Houwer, 1997), we observed signi® cant affective Simon effects
even though it was very unlikely that participants intentionally processed
the meaning of the stimuli. In these experiments, positive and negative
words were presented in upper-case or lower-case letters. Participants had
to use letter-case as a cue to respond with the words POSITIVE or
NEGATIVE, while ignoring the valence of the presented words. It can
reasonably be assumed that participants did not try to process the meaning
of the words simply because all semantic features of the words were
irrelevant with regard to its letter-case. Nevertheless, we found that
response times were signi® cantly shorter when the valence of the stimulus
word and the response word corresponded than when both elements
differed. Therefore, these results demonstrate more directly that stimulus
valence can be processed automatically even when the meaning of the
words is not processed intentionally. But it needs to be emphasised that
these results do not provide stronger evidence for automatic stimulus
58 DE HOUWER AND EELEN

evaluation than the results observed in the present experiments. They only
provide stronger evidence for the hypothesis that automatic affective
processing does not depend on intentional semantic-processing of the
presented stimuli.
As was mentioned in the introduction, evidence for automatic affective-
processing has already been obtained using other paradigms. Our results
con® rm these previous ® ndings and thus provide additional evidence for
automatic affective-processing using a new paradigm. The main aim of the
paper, however, was to introduce the affective Simon paradigm as new and
¯ exible tool for studying (automatic) affective-processing. Compared to
other paradigms that can be used to study automatic affective-processing,
the affective Simon paradigm certainly has its advantages. For instance,
unlike in affective priming (e.g. Bargh et al., 1992, 1996; Hermans et al.,
1994; Fazio et al., 1986; Klauer et al., 1997) and Stroop studies (De
Houwer & Hermans, 1994; Pratto & John, 1991), it is not necessary to
control for the possible effects of nonaffective stimulus properties, such as
frequency, desirability, associative properties, etc., because in an ade-
quately conducted affective Simon experiment, each stimulus functions
as its own control. Another interesting feature of the affective Simon
paradigm is that it allows researchers to manipulate more closely the
way in which stimuli are processed. This can be done by manipulating
the nature of the relevant feature. For instance, one can assume that the
extent or probability of (intentional or unintentional) semantic-processing
of a word will be smaller when letter-case is the target feature than when
grammatical category is the target feature (De Houwer, 1997). In affective
priming and Stroop studies, it is often dif® cult to assess how participants
process the stimuli and even more dif® cult to manipulate the way in which
the stimuli are processed. But we do not want to argue that the affective
Simon paradigm is the ``best’’ paradigm to study automatic affective-
processing. If we want to improve our understanding of automatic
affective-processing, all paradigms that can be used to achieve this goal
are valuable and have to be used.
Finally, we would like to make a general point about the usefulness of
irrelevant feature paradigms such as the Simon and Stroop paradigms as
research tools. These paradigms are not restricted to particular kinds of
stimuli (Kornblum, 1992). Many variants of the Stroop paradigm have
already been developed, not only to extend the knowledge of the Stroop
phenomenon itself, but also as a tool to study a variety of other problems
(Dyer, 1973) such as picture- and word-processing (e.g. Glaser, 1992;
Schriefers, Meyer, & Levelt, 1990; Roelofs, 1992), affective-processing
(e.g. De Houwer & Hermans, 1994; Pratto & John, 1991), bilingual
language organisation (e.g. MaÈgiste, 1984), and subliminal perception
(e.g. Cheesman & Merikle, 1984). Until now, researchers mainly used a
 AFFECTIVE SIMON EFFECT 59
spatial variant of the Simon paradigm. However, it is also possible to
develop many other variants of the Simon paradigm. The key step is to
alter the nature of the relation between the irrelevant feature and the
responses. For instance, if one wants to create a phonological Simon
effect, the irrelevant feature should be the phonological properties of a
stimulus that should be similar or dissimilar to the phonological properties
of the responses. When such a variant has been constructed, it can be used
as a tool to study phonological-processing. When treated as a research tool,
the Simon paradigm is therefore potentially as useful as the Stroop para-
digm has proven to be. Our research can be regarded as a ® rst attempt to
use this potential of the Simon paradigm.

Manuscript received 1 May 1996

Revised manuscript received 10 October 1996

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