Attitudes to the right: Evaluative processing is associated with lateralized late positive event-related brain potentials

John T. Cacioppo, Ohio State University - Main Campus
Stephen L. Crites, University of Texas at El Paso
Wendy L. Gardner, Northwestern University

Abstract

The authors recently developed a paradigm to investigate the evaluative categorization stage of attitudes using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The present series of 5 studies with a total of 118 Ss extended this approach by analyzing the spatial topography of the ERP over the lateral scalp region to address complementary questions regarding the nature of operations underlying the evaluative categorization stage of attitude processing. Consistent with the hypothesis that evaluative categorizations engage mechanisms associated with hedonic or global language processing, results revealed that the standardized amplitudes of the late positive potential of the ERP during evaluative categorization were larger over the right than the left scalp region, whereas nonevaluative categorizations were associated with a symmetrically distributed ERP across the left and right scalp regions.