The evaluation-behavior link: Direct and beyond valence

The present research tests the hypothesis that affective stimuli automatically trigger approach/avoidance tendencies. A first experiment showed that in a vigilance task participants responded faster with an approach behavior (i.e., arm flexion) to happy words than to sad words and faster with an avoidance behavior (i.e., arm extension) to sad than to happy words that were presented outside of conscious awareness. These findings were replicated and extended in a second experiment. In this experiment, emotion words presented outside of conscious awareness were responded faster by arm flexion when they were associated with approach than when they were associated with avoidance, irrespective of their valence. Conversely, emotion words associated with avoidance were responded faster by arm extension. Globally, these findings suggest that the implicit perception of affective stimuli automatically triggers the behavioral responses that are associated with them.     

Dynamic variations in affective priming

The present study investigates the dynamics of emotional processing and awareness using an affective facial priming paradigm in conjunction with a multimodal assessment of awareness. Key facial primes are visually masked, and are presented for brief (unconscious) and extended (conscious) durations. Using a preference measure, we examine whether the effects of the primes differ qualitatively (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). We show that: (a) unconscious affective priming with faces emerges strongly in initial presentations and diminishes rapidly with repetition; (b) conscious affective priming also emerges strongly in initial presentations, however it persists in strength with repetition; and (c) in contrast to other reports on the salience of negative stimuli, happy faces appear more salient than sad faces when presented outside awareness. We discuss the limits and extensions of unconscious affective priming with faces, and consider several methodological and conceptual questions concerning emotional processing out of awareness.     

Approach and avoidance as action effects

Numerous studies use arm movements (arm flexion and extension) to investigate the interaction between emotional stimuli and approach/avoidance behaviour. In many experiments, however, these arm movements are ambiguous. Arm flexion can be interpreted either as pulling (approach) or as withdrawing (avoidance). On the contrary, arm extension can be interpreted as reaching (approach) or as pushing (avoidance). This ambiguity can be resolved by regarding approach and avoidance as flexible action plans that are represented in terms of their effects. Approach actions reduce the distance between a stimulus and the self, whereas avoidance actions increase that distance. In this view, action effects are an integral part of the representation of an action. As a result, a neutral action can become an approach or avoidance reaction if it repeatedly results in decreasing or increasing the distance to a valenced stimulus. This hypothesis was tested in the current study. Participants responded to positive and negative words using key-presses. These “neutral” responses (not involving arm flexion or extension) were consistently followed by a stimulus movement toward or away from the participant. Responses to emotional words were faster when the response's effect was congruent with stimulus valence, suggesting that approach/avoidance actions are indeed defined in terms of their outcomes.     

The effects of approach and avoidance motor actions on the elements of creative insight

The authors propose that the nonaffective bodily feedback produced by arm flexion and extension informs individuals about the processing requirements of the situation, leading to the adoption of differential processing styles and thereby influencing creativity. Specifically, the authors predicted that arm flexion would elicit a heuristic processing strategy and bolster insight processes, whereas arm extension would elicit a systematic processing strategy and impair insight processes. To test these predictions, the authors assessed the effects of these motor actions on 3 central elements of creative insight: contextual set-breaking, restructuring, and mental search. As predicted, in 6 experiments, arm flexion, relative to arm extension, facilitated insight-related processes. In a 7th experiment, arm extension, relative to arm flexion, facilitated analytical reasoning, supporting a cognitive tuning interpretation of the findings.     

Do approach-avoidance actions create attitudes?

Do approach-avoidance actions create attitudes? Prior influential studies suggested that rudimentary attitudes could be established by simply pairing novel stimuli (Chinese ideographs) with arm flexion (approach) or arm extension (avoidance). In three experiments, we found that approach-avoidance actions alone were insufficient to account for such effects. Instead, we found that these affective influences resulted from the interaction of these actions with a priori differences in stimulus valence. Thus, with negative stimuli, the effect of extension on attitude was more positive than the effect of flexion. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the affect from motivationally compatible or incompatible action can also influence task evaluations. A final experiment, using Chinese ideographs from the original studies, confirmed these findings. Both approach and avoidance actions led to more positive evaluations of the ideographs when the actions were motivationally compatible with the prior valence of the ideographs. The attitudinal impact of approach-avoidance action thus reflects its situated meaning, which depends on the valence of stimuli being approached or avoided.     

Embodiment effects in memory for facial identity and facial expression

Research suggests that states of the body, such as postures, facial expressions, and arm movements, play central roles in social information processing. This study investigated the effects of approach/avoidance movements on memory for facial information. Faces displaying a happy or a sad expression were presented and participants were induced to perform either an approach (arm flexion) or an avoidance (arm extension) movement. States of awareness associated with memory for facial identity and memory for facial expression were then assessed with the Remember/Know/Guess paradigm. The results showed that performing avoidance movements increased Know responses for the identity, and Know/Guess responses for the expression, of valence-compatible stimuli (i.e., sad faces as compared to happy faces), whereas this was not the case for approach movements. Based on these findings, it is suggested that approach/avoidance motor actions influence memory encoding by increasing the ease of processing for valence-compatible information.     

Automatic appraisal of motivational valence: Motivational affective priming and Simon effects

We investigated whether motivationally determined stimulus valence can be processed in an automatic way, as is assumed in many appraisal theories (e.g., Frijda, 1986, 1993; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1993a). Whereas appraisal theorists typically use conscious self-report methods to investigate their assumptions, our experiments used indirect experimental methods that leave less room for deliberate, conscious reflections of the participants. Using variants of the affective priming and Simon paradigms, we demonstrated that intrinsically neutral, but wanted stimuli facilitated responses with a positive valence, whereas intrinsically neutral, but unwanted stimuli facilitated negative responses. In addition, the second experiment proved to be supportive of another assumption made by appraisal theorists according to which a relation exits between different (automatic) outcomes of motivational appraisal (positive-negative) and different action tendencies (approach-withdrawal).     

Judging Words at Face Value: Interference in a Word Processing Task Reveals Automatic Processing of Affective Facial Expressions

Earlier research has indicated that some characteristics of facial expressions may be automatically processed. This study investigated automaticity as evidenced by involuntary interference in a word evaluation task. Compound stimuli, consisting of words superimposed on pictures of affective faces, were presented to subjects who were given the task of evaluating the affective valence of the words while disregarding the faces. Results of three experiments showed that word evaluation was influenced by the concurrently shown affective faces. Overall, negative words were found to require longer latencies, indicating that more processing resources are invested in negative than in positive stimuli. This speed advantage for positive words was modified by the faces. Negative words were facilitated, relative to positive ones, when shown with a negative expression (e.g. a sad face). Correspondingly, negative words were inhibited, relative to positive ones, when shown with a positive expression (e.g. a happy face). The results are consistent with automatic, involuntary semantic processing of affective facial expressions.     

Affective Contagion in Effortful Political Thinking

We offer a theory of motivated political reasoning based on the claim that the feelings aroused in the initial stages of processing sociopolitical information inevitably color all phases of the evaluation process. When a citizen is called on to express a judgment, the considerations that enter into conscious rumination will be biased by the valence of initial affect. This article reports the results of two experiments that test our affective contagion hypothesis—unnoticed affective cues influence the retrieval and construction of conscious considerations in the direction of affective congruence. We then test whether these affectively congruent considerations influence subsequently reported policy evaluations, which we call affective mediation. In short, the considerations that come consciously to mind to inform and to support the attitude construction process are biased systematically by the feelings that are aroused in the earliest stages of processing. This underlying affective bias in processing drives motivated reasoning and rationalization in political thinking.     

Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming?

The finding of stronger affective priming in less conscious (suboptimal) conditions than in fully conscious (optimal) conditions (S. T. Murphy & R. B. Zajonc, 1993) is theoretically important because it contradicts notions that emotions are primarily reflected by conscious states. In 2 experiments, this pattern of results was obtained. Happy and angry faces were presented both optimally and suboptimally and were masked by unknown ideographs. In Experiment 1, instructions for the conscious and less conscious affective priming conditions were matched, and affective ratings of ideographs were determined. In Experiment 2, a more implicit affective measure (facial electromyography of musculus zygomaticus major and musculus corrugator supercilii) served as the dependent variable. Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming was found in both experiments. It is concluded that stronger suboptimal than optimal processing is characteristic for affective processing and that it can also be found when instructions are matched and when a more implicit measure is assessed.     

Nonconscious goal pursuit: Acting in an explanatory vacuum

Nonconsciously activated goals and consciously set goals produce the same outcomes by engaging similar psychological processes (Bargh, 1990; Gollwitzer & Bargh, 2005). However, nonconscious and conscious goal pursuit may have different effects on subsequent affect if goal pursuit affords an explanation, as nonconscious goal pursuit occurs in an explanatory vacuum (i.e. cannot be readily attributed to the respective goal intention). We compared self-reported affect after nonconscious versus conscious goal pursuit that either violated or conformed to a prevailing social norm. When goal-directed behavior did not require an explanation (was norm-conforming), affective experiences did not differ after nonconscious and conscious goal pursuit. However, when goal-directed behavior required an explanation (was norm-violating), nonconscious goal pursuit induced more negative affect than conscious goal pursuit.     

The Influence of Approach and Avoidance Motor Actions on Creative Cognition

This study tested whether internal nonaffective processing cues independently influence two major varieties of creative cognition: insight problem solving and creative generation. In Experiments 1 and 2, bodily cues associated with positive or negative hedonic states were manipulated by means of arm flexor or extensor contraction, respectively, and the effects of these internal cues on creative insight and generation were observed. In line with our cognitive tuning approach, it was predicted that the “riskier,” more explorative processing style elicited by arm flexion, relative to the more risk-averse, perseverant processing style elicited by arm extension, would facilitate performance on both tasks. These predictions were strongly supported. In addition, Experiments 3 and 4 provided the first direct evidence that the effects of these internal processing cues on creativity are mediated by a memory search-based mechanism. Reported effects were independent of mood, task enjoyment, and the effortfulness of the motor actions.     

Fearful expressions gain preferential access to awareness during continuous flash suppression

Rapid evaluation of ecologically relevant stimuli may lead to their preferential access to awareness. Continuous flash suppression allows assessment of affective processing under conditions in which stimuli have been rendered invisible due to the strongly suppressive nature of dynamic noise relative to static images. The authors investigated whether fearful expressions emerge from suppression into awareness more quickly than images of neutral or happy expressions. Fearful faces were consistently detected faster than neutral or happy faces. Responses to inverted faces were slower than those to upright faces but showed the same effect of emotional expression, suggesting that some key feature or features in the inverted faces remained salient. When using stimuli solely representing the eyes, a similar bias for detecting fear emerged, implicating the importance of information from the eyes in the preconscious processing of fear expressions.     

Role of working memory load on selective attention to affectively valent information

Empirical evidence obtained with neutral stimuli has shown that selective attention relies on working memory functions as distractor processing occurs under conditions of high but not of low working memory load. We investigated whether these findings also hold for affectively valent distractors. In three experiments, participants completed the original Flanker task with famous people (Exps 1 and 2) and an affective Flanker task (Exp. 3) in which positive and negative words were presented superimposed onto happy, angry, and neutral faces under conditions of high or low working memory load. In line with past findings, results showed greater interference effects due to processing of distractors showing known people under high working memory load. In contrast interference effects due to processing of valent distractors occurred regardless of working memory load. The present findings are in contrast with those reported with neutral stimuli as they indicate that automatic evaluation of incoming affectively valent information occurs regardless of task priorities and of working memory load.     

Covert detection of attractiveness among the neurologically intact: evidence from skin-conductance responses

Several studies have shown that participants, without a deficit in face recognition, give an increased skin conductance response (SCR) to familiar faces when presented subliminally, hence suggesting covert recognition of these faces. In the experiment presented here we manipulated familiarity and attractiveness and tested whether participants distinguished between faces for these variables when presented too fast to allow conscious recognition. Three sets of faces were presented: famous attractive; unfamiliar attractive; and unfamiliar less attractive. SCRs were the same for each category of faces whether presented subliminally or supraliminally, and were the same for attractive faces, whether famous or unfamiliar; however, SCRs differed between the attractive and less attractive faces. The findings support those of Stone et al (2001 Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience 1 183-191) and suggest that higher SCRs to famous faces are not necessarily due to covert recognition, but may be a response to the positive affective valence of the stimuli.     

Control of impulsive emotional behaviour through implementation intentions

Past research has established that people can strategically enhance or override impulsive emotional behaviour with implementation intentions (Eder, Rothermund, & Proctor, 2010). However, it is unclear whether emotional action tendencies change by intentional processes or by habit formation processes due to repeated enactment of the intention (or both). The present study shows that forming implementation intentions is sufficient to modulate emotional action tendencies. Participants received instructions about how to respond to positive and negative stimuli on evaluation trials but no such trials were actually presented. Results showed that merely intending to approach and avoid affective stimuli influenced emotional action tendencies in a modified affective Simon task in which affective valence was irrelevant. An affective Simon effect (i.e., faster reactions when the valence of the stimulus corresponded with the valence of the movement) was observed when participants intended evaluations with affectively congruent responses (i.e., positive-approach, negative-avoid); in contrast, the effect was reversed in direction when participants planned evaluations with incongruent responses (i.e., positive-avoid, negative-approach). Thus, implementation intentions can regulate implicit emotional responses even in the absence of possible habit formation processes. Implications for dual-system accounts of emotion regulation are discussed.     

The affective priming effect: Automatic activation of evaluative information in memory

Abstract

Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) argued that affect may be activated automatically from memory on the mere observation of an affect-loaded stimulus. Using a variant of the standard sequential priming paradigm, it was demonstrated that the time needed to evaluate target words as positive or negative decreased if they were preceded by a similarly valenced prime word, but increased when preceded by a prime of opposite valence. Several aspects of their procedure, however, do not warrant their conclusion concerning the unconditionality of the effect. The present research investigated the generality of this affective priming effect. In Experiment 1, it was tested whether the effect can be generalised to more complex visual material. Stimulus pairs consisted of colour slides. Subjects had to evaluate the targets as quickly as possible. In Experiment 2, the standard word-word procedure was used, but target words had to be pronounced. In both experiments, significant affective priming effects were observed, supporting Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, and Pratto's (1992) assertion that the automatic activation effect is a pervasive and relative unconditional phenomenon. Implications for theories of affect and emotion are discussed.     

Separable neural components in the processing of black and white faces

In a study of the neural components of automatic and controlled social evaluation, White participants viewed Black and White faces during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. When the faces were presented for 30 ms, activation in the amygdala-a brain region associated with emotion-was greater for Black than for White faces. When the faces were presented for 525 ms, this difference was significantly reduced, and regions of frontal cortex associated with control and regulation showed greater activation for Black than White faces. Furthermore, greater race bias on an indirect behavioral measure was correlated with greater difference in amygdala activation between Black and White faces, and frontal activity predicted a reduction in Black-White differences in amygdala activity from the 30-ms to the 525-ms condition. These results provide evidence for neural distinctions between automatic and more controlled processing of social groups, and suggest that controlled processes may modulate automatic evaluation.     

Electrophysiological evidence reveals affective evaluation deficits early in stimulus processing in patients with panic disorder

Cognitive and neurobiological accounts of clinical anxiety and depression were examined via event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded from patients with panic disorder and healthy controls as they performed an old/new recognition memory task with emotionally negative and neutral words. The emotive connotation of words systematically influenced control subjects' - but not patients' - ERP effects at prefrontal sites in a latency range (to approximately 300-500 ms) generally assumed to reflect greater contribution of automatic than controlled memory processes. This provides evidence for dysfunctional inhibitory modulation of affective information processing in panic disorder. The ERP effects after 700 ms, however, suggest that some patients may adopt conscious strategies to minimize the impact of these early processing abnormalities on overt behaviors.     

Control of impulsive emotional behaviour through implementation intentions

Past research has established that people can strategically enhance or override impulsive emotional behaviour with implementation intentions (Eder, Rothermund, & Proctor, 2010). However, it is unclear whether emotional action tendencies change by intentional processes or by habit formation processes due to repeated enactment of the intention (or both). The present study shows that forming implementation intentions is sufficient to modulate emotional action tendencies. Participants received instructions about how to respond to positive and negative stimuli on evaluation trials but no such trials were actually presented. Results showed that merely intending to approach and avoid affective stimuli influenced emotional action tendencies in a modified affective Simon task in which affective valence was irrelevant. An affective Simon effect (i.e., faster reactions when the valence of the stimulus corresponded with the valence of the movement) was observed when participants intended evaluations with affectively congruent responses (i.e., positive–approach, negative–avoid); in contrast, the effect was reversed in direction when participants planned evaluations with incongruent responses (i.e., positive–avoid, negative–approach). Thus, implementation intentions can regulate implicit emotional responses even in the absence of possible habit formation processes. Implications for dual-system accounts of emotion regulation are discussed.