--- abstract: |- In a recent article, Dijksterhuis and Aarts (2003) investigated the preferential detection of negative stimuli. According to them, their data clearly indicate that it requires less stimulus input or less stimulus exposure to detect a negative stimulus than to detect a positive stimulus. However, we believe their research suffers from a number of limitations and methodological flaws that cast doubt on their conclusions. Using signal detection analyses, we demonstrate that none of their three studies provides sufficiently informative data with respect to their hypotheses. Moreover, we show that their experimental designs seem to be inadequate to test their hypotheses. altloc: - http://www.ulg.ac.be/cogsci/clabiouse/psych_science_comment.pdf chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: 'Dijksterhuis, A., & Aarts, H. (2003). On wildebeests and humans: The preferential detection of negative stimuli. Psychological Science, 14, 14 – 18.' confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Labiouse given: Christophe L. honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2004-05 date_type: published datestamp: 2004-05-12 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/36/31 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 3631 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/3631/1/psych_science_comment.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'signal detection theory, subliminal perception ' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:36 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: 5 pagerange: 364-365 pubdom: FALSE publication: Psychological Science publisher: American Psychological Society refereed: TRUE referencetext: |- Dijksterhuis, A., & Aarts, H. (2003). On wildebeests and humans: The preferential detection of negative stimuli. Psychological Science, 14, 14 – 18. Holender, D. (1986). Semantic activation without conscious identification in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and appraisal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 1 – 66. Macmillan, N. A., & Creelman, D. (1991). Detection theory: A user’s guide. New York: Cambridge University Press. relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:52:26 subjects: - psy-phys - cog-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'Is there a real preferential detection of negative stimuli? A comment on Dijksterhuis and Aarts (2003)' type: journalp userid: 4887 volume: 15