On pleasure and thrill: The interplay between arousal and valence during visual word recognition

• We investigated effects of valence and arousal on word processing with a 3 × 3 orthogonal design.
• Performance was better for positive valence, relative to negative and neutral, and for high-relative to low arousal.
• ERP data revealed enhanced visual processing for positive valence and high arousal.
• Time course showed early effect of arousal, followed by interactive and asymmetrical effects of valence and arousal.
• Largest emotional effects were obtained for combinations of arousal and valence.

We investigated the interplay between arousal and valence in the early processing of affective words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read words organized in an orthogonal design with the factors valence (positive, negative, neutral) and arousal (low, medium, high) in a lexical decision task. We observed faster reaction times for words of positive valence and for those of high arousal. Data from ERPs showed increased early posterior negativity (EPN) suggesting improved visual processing of these conditions. Valence effects appeared for medium and low arousal and were absent for high arousal. Arousal effects were obtained for neutral and negative words but were absent for positive words. These results suggest independent contributions of arousal and valence at early attentional stages of processing. Arousal effects preceded valence effects in the ERP data suggesting that arousal serves as an early alert system preparing a subsequent evaluation in terms of valence.