What Is the Relationship Between Affect and Information-Processing Styles?: This and Other Global and Local Questions Inspired by GLOMOsys

Without question the broad distinction between global and local processing is an important one. As many researchers have found, simply changing individuals’ processing styles can significantly alter their perceptions, judgments, and behaviors. Importantly, the processing style that is most adaptive at any time depends on the situation. Although the global–local processing distinction and terminology date back only a little more than 30 years (Navon, 1977), the distinction between holistic (i.e., global) and elemental (i.e., local) approaches was captured long ago in philosophy (Kant, 1781/1969) and psychology (Asch, 1946; Anderson, 1981). As Forster and his colleagues have previously noted (Forster, 2009; Forster, Liberman, & Kuschel, 2008), this distinction is important within many areas of psychology. For example, global and local processing have been associated with differences in person perception (Hunsinger, Isbell, & Clore, 2010), independent versus interdependent self construals (Kuhnen & Oyserman, 2002), mood (Gasper & Clore, 2002), creativity (e.g., Friedman, Fishbach, Forster, & Werth, 2003), face recognition (Macrae & Lewis, 2002), eyewitness identification (Darling, Martin, Hellmann, & Memon, 2009), autism (Wang, Mottron, Peng, Berthiaume, & Dawson, 2007), obsessive– compulsive disorder (Yovel, Revelle, & Mineka, 2005), and anxiety (Mikulincer, Kedem, & Paz, 1990). Within social cognition, this broad distinction has become one of the most fundamental (see Fiske & Taylor, 2008). For all of these reasons and more, it is not surprising to see a recent surge in research investigating the conditions under which global and local processing are likely to occur in both laboratory and real-world settings. To date, one of the most widely cited articles on global versus local processing is one written by Navon (1977), which has been cited in PsycINFO 732 times with only 95 citations in the first 23 years after it was published (1977–2000), 223 citations between 2000 and 2005, and 414 citations since 2005. Clearly Navon’s work has inspired exponential growth in interest and research on global and local processing in the past decade. It is during this time that some of the most fascinating discoveries about global and local processing have been uncovered. For example, the discovery that global and local processing carry over from one task to another, regardless of content and modality, not only is important on its own but also has served as a catalyst for many research questions. This work and the work of Forster, Navon, and others have informed and inspired much research, including my own recent work and the work of my colleagues who are investigating the impact of affect on information processing. Given the recent explosion of research examining both the moderators and the effects of global and local processing, it is laudable that Förster and Dannenberg (this issue) have attempted to unify all of the work that has been done. To do so, they introduce GLOMOsys as an overarching theoretical account of when global and local processing are likely to occur. GLOMOsys attempts to unite a large body of findings from seemingly disparate literatures under one content-free explanatory umbrella. Förster and Dannenberg (this issue) suggest that this conceptual umbrella is the distinction between novelty and familiarity, where novel events are processed by the global information processing system and familiar events are processed by the local system. According to the authors, the distinction between novelty and familiarity can be used to explain everything from why the color red, a sad mood and other signals of danger, psychological closeness, lust, and low social power promote local processing, to why the color blue, a happy mood and other cues associated with safety, psychological distance, love, and high social power promote global processing. The authors’ account is impressive in terms of its breadth and its simplicity, and it is generative, is potentially powerful, and has significant heuristic value. It raises important questions to be sure, but this model and the diverse body of research that inspired it are likely to have a lasting impact as the theoretical, methodological, and applied implications of this work further traverse psychology and related fields. This work has already significantly impacted researchers’ investigations of the relationship between affect and cognition. The primary focus of my comments is on the influence of affect in promoting global versus local information processing. As a secondary focus I raise several global and local questions about GLOMOsys, including (a) Is novelty the “glue” in GLOMOsys? (b)