Increased affective influence : situational complexity or deliberation time ?

The Affect Infusion Model (AIM) is a prominent theory of when current emotional state is expected to influence the interpretation of a social stimulus (situation). We discuss the assumptions in AIM and conclude that its current specification predicts that both deliberation time and situational complexity should lead to affect infusion. The aim of this research was to clarify the relative importance of these factors in determining affect infusion, and hence aid the further development of AIM. We present an experimental design in which situational complexity and deliberation time can be manipulated orthogonally as independent factors. Our results show that it is the latter factor, but not the former, which can influence the degree of affect infusion. 2 complexity vs. time Cognitive theory, despite its sophistication, has been somewhat lacking when it comes to considering the role of emotion in behavior. From a practical point of view, this is an important shortcoming, as, for example, Razran (1940) illustrated in his pioneering study: Razran showed that a happy audience was more likely to welcome sociopolitical messages, than an unhappy one. Much research highlights the importance of an expectation of positive affect in decision making. For example, Mellers and McGraw (2001) found that anticipatory pleasure often influenced the choices of their participants. Damasio (1994) suggested that perceptual representations can be linked with any relevant emotional experiences. This can help in decision making situations, by eliminating possibilities which are associated with negative emotions. In Peters’ et al. (2006) overview, there are some similar ideas, including the role of affect as a ‘common currency’ to evaluate disparate possibilities and the motivating role of affect (in terms of attaining positive emotions). Also, in psychopathology, there is an extensive literature on how personally relevant stimuli can capture observers’ attention (e.g., Cox, Fadardi & Pothos, 2006). Without doubt, affect is an important component of utility in decision making. But, one can also ask whether information regarding the current emotional state of an observer can interfere with cognitive processing in a way that does not relate to the utility of expected affect. In particular, we can formulate two general questions. First, what is the nature of the interaction between emotion and (the rest of) cognition and second when is it more likely that the current emotional state will affect a cognitive process. A theory which is particularly well-suited to tackle these problems is Forgas’s (1995a) Affect Infusion Model (AIM), an extensively researched and supported model for how emotion and cognition interact. The AIM is innovative in 3 complexity vs. time that it enables predictions of when affect infusion should occur within a principled framework for various mechanisms of decision making. The focus of this work is AIM. We first summarize the main assumptions of AIM and subsequently proceed to motivate the examination of a particular prediction of the theory. According to AIM, when interpreting a novel social situation, affect infusion is defined to occur when our current emotional state leads to an interpretation of the situation specifically congruent with this emotional state (cf. Bower, 1981; Forgas, 1995a; Isen, Shalker, Clark, & Karp, 1978). For example, consider a scene of a man and a woman talking to each other, such that there are no cues as to whether this is a happy/excited interaction or an unhappy/angry one. Affect infusion would occur if people in (say) an unhappy mood would be more likely to offer unhappy interpretations—this is the basis of our experimental investigation. Forgas (1995a) proposed that there are four relevant (i.e., when it comes to considering possible interactions between cognition and emotion) modes of cognitive processing; knowing which mode of cognitive processing applies in a given situation can help predict whether affect infusion will occur or not (Figure 1). First, a person can access information about a belief already held; in such cases, an emotional valence may already be attached to a belief and therefore there would be little scope for the current emotional state to affect perception of the belief (this mode is referred to as ‘direct access’). For example, the attitude towards environmental issues of a committed environmentalist will not be affected by her current state of mind. Second, there are situations where information processing takes place in order to accomplish a specific goal, and so an effort would be made to specifically suppress potential emotional influences (this is the ‘motivated processing’ mode). For example, a person in an interview would do his best not to let his current emotional state affect his 4 complexity vs. time performance. Third, we sometimes reach decisions not on the basis of any thorough consideration or examination of alternative possibilities, but rather relying on intuition, first impressions, or gut feeling (this is the ‘heuristic’ mode). The current emotional state can influence such decisions, as the non-emotional foundation of the decisions is weak (cf. theories considering affect as an additional source of information, e.g., Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Finally, making a social judgment can involve a substantive, generative process, in cases where unfamiliar information is encountered. For example, a novel social stimulus will have to be interpreted possibly by requiring access to personally relevant information. Personally relevant information is often encoded on the basis of emotional valence (as well as other information), therefore, current emotional state may, e.g., prime access to certain memories as opposed to others (this mode is called ‘substantive’ processing; cf. Kunda, 1990). An example of this is the finding of Bower (1981; Isen, 1984), who showed that participants in an unhappy mood are more likely to recall unhappy episodes etc. The third and fourth modes of cognitive processing are considered ‘constructive’, in the sense that a person’s reliance on existing knowledge representations, e.g., for understanding a novel social situation, is limited; therefore, novel representations have to be constructed from the combination of stored information and new stimulus details (Fiedler, 1991; Forgas, 1992, 1995b). ----------------------------Figure 1 about here--------------------------The focus of the present work is the role of deliberation time and situational complexity in the likelihood of affect infusion. By deliberation time, we mean the amount of time devoted to interpreting a novel social stimulus. By situational complexity (or situational information), we mean the amount of information available 5 complexity vs. time for a novel social stimulus. It is interesting to consider these two factors concurrently because they are related (e.g., we may devote more time in interpreting a more complex situation), but in principle, and in many practical situations, are independent. For example, we often have to consider complex problems under time pressure and, conversely, sometimes we have too much time to resolve a relatively uninvolved dilemma. AIM predicts differential affect infusion across situations defined by both high/low deliberation time and high/low situational complexity. According to the third suggested cognitive mode, affect infusion is more likely to occur when cognitive processing is heuristic. In heuristic processing, we seek to derive a conclusion fast and, therefore, we are more likely to rely on our current emotional state as a decision-making guide. In such cases, the less the available time, the more pressure there would be to reach a decision quickly and, therefore, the more we expect heuristic processing to occur (cf. Gigerenzer, 1996). Such a perspective is consistent with theories of affect infusion which posit that affect can be considered an extra source of information (e.g., Schwarz & Clore, 1983), as well, of course, as being part of AIM. Note that whether affect is a valid source of information in interpreting the social scene or not will depend on the context. For example, if a person A is trying to interpret a social interaction between persons B and C and all three persons A, B, C are in the same or similar situation, then the current emotional state of person A will probably be a valid cue for the interpretation of the interaction between B and C. According to the fourth cognitive mode, substantive processing, substantial transformations/ generative elaboration of the stimulus of interest, are likely to encourage affect infusion. For example, for a person to interpret an ambiguous interaction between a man and a woman such that there are no cues as to whether this is a happy/excited interaction or an unhappy/angry on, it seems inevitable that the 6 complexity vs. time person will have to ‘transform’ this novel social stimulus to a more interpretable form, with the aid of corresponding personal experiences (e.g., the person could remember similar interactions he/she may have had with the opposite gender; cf. Bower, 1981; Bower & Forgas, 2001). This leads to the prediction that the less the situation complexity, the longer the generative process which will be required to interpret the novel stimulus, and the more we expect substantive processing to occur. Thus, the current specification of the AIM architecture predicts that both deliberation time and situational complexity, in principle, predict affect infusion. Whether these factors are equally important in determining affect infusion, or whether one might be dominant relative to the other, is clearly a key empirical issue, which can further inform the AIM and influence its future revisions. The purpose of the present research is to factorially manipulate the two factors within the same experimental design and so settle this issue. Existing empirical evidence cannot hel