Many authors have endorsed the hypothesis that previous emotional experiences may exert a covert influence on behavior, but some
findings and replications of the original studies challenged this view. We investigated this topic by carrying out an experiment with the
Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), where a dissociation procedure was adopted to successfully isolate possible implicit components. After a
typical interaction with the IGT, participants performed a ‘‘blind’’ card selection phase without receiving any feedback. Half of them
were instructed to continue choosing as they did before, the other half was told that good card decks turned bad, and vice versa, so that
explicit knowledge was necessary to overcome the previously learned deck-outcome associations. The results confirmed the existence of
early acquired implicit biases, confirming that previously experienced emotional events may covertly affect subsequent behavior.
