Necker’s smile: Immediate affective consequences of early perceptual processes Sascha Topolinski a,⇑ , Thorsten M. Erle b , Rolf Reber c a University of Cologne, Germany b University of Würzburg, Germany c University of Oslo, Norway article info Article history: Received 21 January 2014 Revised 9 December 2014 Accepted 4 March 2015 Keywords: Gestalt Illusory contours Visual disambiguation Affect abstract Current theories assume that perception and affect are separate realms of the mind. In con- trast, we argue that affect is a genuine online-component of perception instantaneously mirroring the success of different perceptual stages. Consequently, we predicted that the success (failure) of even very early and cognitively encapsulated basic visual processing steps would trigger immediate positive (negative) affective responses. To test this assump- tion, simple visual stimuli that either allowed or obstructed early visual processing stages without participants being aware of this were presented briefly. Across 5 experiments, we found more positive affective responses to stimuli that allowed rather than obstructed Gestalt completion at certain early visual stages (Experiments 1–3; briefest presentation 100 ms with post-mask), and visual disambiguation in possible vs. impossible Necker cubes (Experiments 4 and 5; briefest presentation 100 ms with post-mask). This effect was observed both on verbal preference ratings (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and as facial mus- cle responses occurring within 2–4 s after stimulus onset (zygomaticus activity; Experiments 3 and 7). For instance, in participants unaware of spatial possibility we found affective discrimination between possible and impossible Necker cubes (the famous Freemish Crate) for 100 ms presentation timings, although a conscious discrimination took more than 2000 ms (Experiment 4). Ó 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Interaction with the environment requires fast assess- ment of threats and opportunities. Within an appraisal theory of emotion, Leventhal and Scherer (1987) proposed that input undergoes different stimulus evaluation checks, some of them at a very early stage of the perceptual pro- cess. One of these early evaluation checks consists in an assessment of the affective quality of the stimulus, that is, whether the stimulus is positive or negative. Demonstrating this, a bulk of research has shown how fast affective stimuli are evaluated (e.g., Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond, & Hymes, 1996; Handy, Smilek, Geiger, Liu, & Schooler, 2010; Kuhbandner, Spitzer, & Pekrun, 2011; LeDoux, 2000; Morris, Öhman, & Dolan, 1998). The present article examines the possibility of such early evaluation checks for emotionally neutral stimuli. Basically, we propose that affect is a genuine online-com- ponent (cf., Barrett & Bar, 2009) of perception, instanta- neously mirroring the success of different perceptual stages (for similar reasoning concerning affect and cogni- tion, see Duncan & Barrett, 2007; Eder, Hommel, & De Houwer, 2007; Storbeck & Clore, 2007). Hence, we predict that obstructing early perceptual processes should elicit rapid and subtle affective responses. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.03.004 0010-0277/Ó 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Social and Economic Cognition, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauß-Straße 2, 50931 Cologne, Germany. E-mail address: sascha.topolinski@uni-koeln.de (S. Topolinski). Cognition 140 (2015) 1–13 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT