If valence is influenced by item believability, then scrambling should eliminate (at least in part) the valence difference between believable and unbelievable items, since removing propositional meaning eliminates the understanding of congruence (or incongruence) with one's beliefs.
Scrambling had a strong effect on these believability ratings, as expected, with the difference between believable and unbelievable items being largely (but not completely) eliminated, F 1, 19) = 232.15, p <.00001, d = 0.92.
In contrast to valence, the believability of the items had little effect on ratings of their arousal, such that arousal ratings were similar for believable (M = 4.42, SE = 0.36) and unbelievable items (M = 4.76, SE = 0.38), F 1, 19) = 1.09, ns, d = 0.05.
While the difference is significant for both content types, this content effect may be explained by a floor effect for affectively charged items, since the already negative valence here would leave less room for unbelievable items to be rated as even more negative.
As in Experiment 1, there was no significant impact of item Believability on arousal ratings, F 1, 19) = 0.66, ns, d = 0.03, such that arousal ratings were similar for believable (M = 4.36, SE = 0.24) and unbelievable items (M = 4.41, SE = 0.25).
When comparing valence and arousal ratings in the same ANOVA, there was a significant interaction between rating and the main effect of belief, F 1, 19) = 6.68, p <.02, d = 0.26, and this was driven by a difference between believable and unbelievable items in the case of valence, t(19) = 3.44, p <.005, and no difference in the case of arousal, t(19) = −0.81, p =.43.
Having made such short work of my task, I spent some time cruising through some of the unbelievable numbers of items offered on the site to see if there was anything I couldn't live without.
But the bestsellers are daily items at unbelievable low prices.
The inverse effect was again not found, such that the affectively charged (i.e., negatively valenced) items were not rated as more unbelievable (M = 4.88, SE = 0.11) than the neutral items (M = 4.86, SE = 0.11), F 1, 19) = 0.04, ns, d = 0.002.
The inverse effect was not found, such that the affectively charged (i.e., negatively valenced) items were not rated as more unbelievable (M = 5.01, SE = 0.10) than the neutral items (M = 5.10, SE = 0.12), F 1, 19) = 0.60, ns, d = 0.03.
This interaction was also present in the case of arousal, such that unbelievable content encouraged increased ratings of arousal only in the case of the neutral items (though not significantly), suggesting that this effect may come from a different underlying cause to that driving the main effect we found of believability on valence ratings.
