Novel stimuli and self-prioritization: AI generated art

Self-prioritisation manifests in faster response times toward stimuli associated with self-relative to those associated with another person. Experimental tasks typically use individual or small sets of familiar stimuli (e.g. pictures of one's own face or sets of geometric shapes). In this experiment we investigated if self-prioritisation effects emerge for individual stimuli when the association with the self is made at a more abstract level that applies to a broad range of unfamiliar stimuli. It was hypothesised participants would form associations with the general stimulus category (styles of art) and as such would exhibit a self-prioritisation effect for novel artworks falling under that category. Participants were assigned to associated themselves and a stranger with one of two styles of art (Cubism and Expressionism) and performed a matching task on a series of novel AI-generated images (n=200). The matching task presented a cubist or expressionist image and a label ‘Yourself’ or ‘Stranger’. Participants indicated if the art and label matched or did not match. Our findings indicate that self-associations can be at abstract levels for novel stimuli. This indicates that processing self-relevant information does not require processing information about individual items in working memory but can accommodate new information.