The Impact of the Emotional Rating of the Ambiguous Logos on its Figure-Ground Aftereffect

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the impact of emotions on the aftereffect of the figure and ground of ambiguous images, the logos. Forty participants who took part in the experiment were asked to distribute ten logos according to the degree of attractiveness, five of which were unambiguous, and five were ambiguous, containing explicit and hidden meanings. At the next stage, the participants made a choice in favor of one of the six proposed names of products that could potentially be produced by a company represented by one of the ten logos they had previously evaluated. Product names could be associated with the explicit meaning of the logo (figure), with its hidden meaning (ground), and also could not be associated with the logo. The aftereffect of figure and ground was assessed by the frequency of choice by the participants of the names, which, according to them, corresponded to the products of the firms represented by the logos. The consequences of two theories regarding the aftereffect of the figure and ground of ambiguous logos were tested depending on their emotional ratings. The results of the study confirm the account of negative choice by V.M. Alla khverdov, according to which the aftereffect of the figure is always positive, but the aftereffect of the ground changes situationally, and is not consistent with the conception of the impact of emotions on the primacy of the global or local, suggesting a differently directed aftereffect of the figure and the ground. It is shown that the factor that determines the aftereffect of the ground can be the emotional attitude of a participant to the logo itself (with positive aftereffect when the attitude is positive, and with a negative one when the attitude is negative), while emotional ratings do not engage the aftereffect of the figure.