From good and bad to can and must: subjective necessity of acts associated with positively and negatively valued stimuli

In Study 1, 24 participants generated sentences expressing ways of dealing with positively and negatively valued noun stimuli (objects and humans). They were instructed to begin each sentence with One + auxiliary verb. The auxiliary was to be selected from a set including auxiliaries expressing high (must) and low (can) necessity. As predicted on the basis of a minimal nonsocial model of behavioral adaptation, higher necessity was associated with negative stimuli than with positive stimuli. In Study 2, this effect was replicated using trait adjectives as stimuli. Consistent with the model, the effect was produced by stimulus valences belonging to an approach‐avoidance related evaluative dimension ‘other‐profitability’. However, additional effects, involving an alternative evaluative dimension ‘self‐profitability’, were not fully accounted for by the model. They suggested that genuine social factors were involved that, however, were only required to explain some marginal effects. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.