title: "The effects of diffuse and distinct affect": retraction of Stapel, Koomen, and Ruys (2002).
abstract: Reports the retraction of "The effects of diffuse and distinct affect. " by Diederik A. Stapel, Willem Koomen and Kirsten I. Ruys (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002[Jul], Vol 83[1], 60-74). This retraction follows the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel. The Noort Committee has found evidence of fraud, leading to the conclusion that fraud is most likely in the data supplied by Diederik A. Stapel. His co-authors were unaware of his actions and were not involved in the collection of the likely fraudulent data. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2002-01515-004.) In a series of suboptimal priming studies, it was shown that both affective and nonaffective reactions to a stimulus may occur without awareness. Moreover, it was demonstrated that affective information is detected earlier than nonaffective information. Therefore, early reactions to an affect-laden stimulus (e.g., a smiling man) are cognitively unappraised and thus diffuse (e.g., "positive"), whereas later affective reactions can be more specific and distinct (e.g., "a smiling man"). Through variations of prime exposure (extremely short, moderately short) the impact of early diffuse and late distinct affect on judgment was investigated. Findings show that distinctness (and prime-target similarity) is an essential determinant of whether the effect of affect is null, assimilation, or contrast. Furthermore, whether affect priming activates diffuse or distinct reactions is a matter of a fraction of seconds.