ABSTRACT
In conversation, what is left unsaid is sometimes more powerful than what is said, because the hearer must supply the meaning. When the hearer does so, the message can be especially compelling. We suggest that this process is evident in certain instances of unconscious affective priming. Specifically, when the source of an activated affective meaning is not apparent, it may be experienced as having an internal source. This, we argue, gives unconscious affective primes their interesting and powerful effects. In the current chapter, we summarize some of our own recent work in this area and suggest some principles for understanding the work of others. In general, we take a skeptical view of some of the claims that have been made about suboptimal priming. Rather than displaying hidden emotional processes (e.g., Bargh, 1997; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993), we assume that subliminal stimulation involves quite ordinary cognitive processes (Clore & Ketelaar, 1997). This is not to say that unconscious priming has ordinary effects. But the intriguing effects that it does produce, we suggest, may be understood by thinking of the process as the activation of semantic meaning without episodic constraints,1 a message without a messenger, one might say.
