A Bipolar Structure of Affective Experience: A Dichotic Listening Study

A current debate ensues between the bivalent and the bipolar views of affect. This study has attempted to further support the side of bipolarity. The bipolar model of affective experience explains that affect is experienced along a single continuum and therefore a person processes only one feeling of affect at a time and cannot experience opposite states of affect simultaneously. I predicted that, in accordance with the bipolar model, participants would be unable to process semantic information from both positive and negative narratives at the same time in a dichotic listening. This inability would cause the participants to make shadowing errors when their attention shifted to the unattended channel as well as causing a vocal delay when the narratives switched auditory channels midway through the experiment. They would rate themselves in bipolar space throughout the experiment, but to then rate themselves in bivalent space when they made a summary judgment at the end of the experiment, since they are asked to combine their entire experience into a discreet rating. Twenty-one undergraduate students participated in a dichotic listening task while using the CTVG to continuously record their current state of affect in real time. The percent of errors made in shadowing, vocal delay, position on the grid for the summary judgments and the placement on the grid surrounding attention shifts were all measured. Results suggest that the structure of the affective experience follows the bipolar model. Implications of this research are discussed. A Bipolar Structure of Affective Experience: A Dichotic Listening Study 3 This paper focuses on the current debate about the structure of affect that poses the bivalent model of affective experience against the bivalent model. This is important because it gets at the heart of the scientific categorization of valence; whether it is one category, which would support the bipolar theory, or whether it is two categories, which would support the bivalent theory. The study of affect is one that influences multiple areas of psychology. Affect steers human interaction and it is a factor in attitudes (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994), stereotyping and prejudice (Cacioppo & Berntson, 2001), and personality (Watson, 2000), among others. There are various dimensions of affect that must be parceled apart. Valence and arousal are the two properties of affect. The structure of valence, defined here are pleasure-displeasure, is constantly being investigated. It is the most ubiquitous feature of affective experience, examined through various measures such as facial expressions (Kring, Smith, & Neale, 1994), psychophysiology (Cacioppo, J. T., Tassinary, L. G., Berntson, G. G., 2000), and self-reports (Watson, Wiese, Viadya, & Tellegen, 1999). Valence is the first and most important property of affect. It is seen as a crucial component in major theories of motivation and emotion. It has been documented that valence is consistently found to be the first factor in a factor analysis when examining selfreports of mood (Watson & Tellegen, 1985). Because valence is so crucial to the study of affect, Watson and his colleagues created the Positive Activation Negative Activation Scale to measure the two dimensions of affect (Watson, Wiese, Viadya, & Tellegen, 1999). The PANAS is now a frequently used scale for self-report measures. One fundamental question that has troubled the conceptualization of affect is whether pleasure and displeasure are configured along one bipolar continuum, centered on a neutral point and extending in two directions, or two continuum, with neutral to pleasure as one, and neutral to displeasure as another, creating the bivalent theory. The bipolar and bivalent views are both used A Bipolar Structure of Affective Experience: A Dichotic Listening Study 4 in an attempt to explain the structure of affect. These two theories constitute the bipolarity debate. The bipolarity debate and the study of affect have a long history. Wundt, for example, considered emotions to fall along a bipolar valence continuum (Reisenzien, 1992). Bipolarity is the original and long lasting idea that positive and negative states form one bipolar continuum centered on a neutral point. Bivalence is a newer theory that claims valence is composed of two independent states, demonstrated through two continuum, with neutral to pleasure as one, and neutral to displeasure as another (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994). Some researchers claim this challenge to bipolarity is now the dominant model in the study of affect. Multiple areas within the realm of psychology have begun to expect a standard of bivalence, including the study of motivation (Carver & Scheier, 2002) and clinical psychology (Zautra, Johnson, & Davis, 2005).