The role of affect in social thinking and interpersonal behaviour

Szczegóły: Utworzono: 11 maja 2007; Joseph P. Forgas

Strona 3 z 3

Summary and Conclusions

This paper argued that mild everyday affective states do have a significant influence on the way people perceive and interpret social behaviors, and the way they plan and execute strategic interactions. Different information processing strategies seem to play a key role in explaining these effects. Multi-process theories such as the Affect Infusion Model (Forgas, 1995a) offer a simple and parsimonious explanation of when, and how affect infusion into social behaviors occurs. Several experiments found that more extensive, substantive processing enhances mood congruity effects, consistent with the predictions of the AIM (Forgas, 1994; 1995b).

The paper also reviewed a number of empirical studies demonstrating how such principles can be translated into behavioral research, and how affective states impact on both simple, and complex interpersonal behaviors. These experiments show that affect can influence behavior monitoring and interpretation, as well as the actual performance of interpersonal behaviors, such as the formulation of, and responses to requests; the planning and execution of strategic negotiations; and the production of persuasive arguments. In contrast, affect infusion is reduced or absent whenever a social cognitive task could be performed using a simple, well-rehearsed direct access strategy, or a highly motivated strategy. In these conditions, there is little need, and little opportunity for incidentally primed mood-congruent information to infuse information processing (Fiedler, 2001; Forgas, 1995a).

Several of the field experiments also showed that affect infusion occurs not only in the laboratory, but also in many real-life situations. These findings have many applied implications. Affect is likely to have a significant influence on relationship behaviors, group behaviors, organizational decisions, consumer preferences, welfare policies and health psychology (Diener, 2000; Forgas & George, 2001; Salovey et al., 2001). Affect is also heavily implicated in many moral judgments and decisions (Haidt, 2002), another rapidly developing area of inquiry on the interface of affect and cognition. The tendency to alternate between substantive and motivated processing strategies, producing affect infusion and affect control respectively, could also be considered as part of an ongoing homeostatic strategy of self-regulatory mood management (Forgas, 2002).

A special case of affective influences occurs when people make judgments about their expected future affective reactions to anticipated outcomes. Such ‘future forecasting’ motivates many human endeavours in everyday life, yet there is now good evidence that people make many systematic mistakes when they forecast their future affective reactions (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000). Exploration of the cognitive processes that underlie such affective forecasting errors is an exciting new research domain that is not yet adequately linked to research on contemporaneous emotion appraisals.

There can thus be little doubt that empirical research and theory building linking affect and cognition will continue apace in the future. In particular, evolutionary ideas are likely to become an important source of theoretical progress, focusing on the adaptive significance of affective phenomena, and highlighting the manifold links between cognitive research and the neurosciences (Buss, 2005). It is not too far-fetched to suggest that in early evolutionary history, wired-in emotional reactions provided distinct survival advantages (Frijda, 1986), just as our existing emotion appraisal strategies clearly serve adaptive ends (Lazarus, 1991; Smith & Kirby, 2000). For example, positive affect also functions as a motivational resource, allowing people to cope with necessary but aversive situations (Trope et al., 2001). Acceptance or rejection by others appears to be a particularly potent cause of affective reactions (Leary, 2000), consistent with the probable evolutionary origins of many affective reactions. Evolutionary thinking might also help us answer the question: What are the cognitive functions of affective states? Is there an identifiable adaptive advantage we derive from experiencing affect? Much recent research suggests the beneficial consequences of positive affect in promoting creativity, flexibility, cooperation, integrative thinking, successful negotiation and a host of other desirable outcomes. However, we have also seen that in the right circumstances, negative affective states such as sadness may also confer significant adaptive advantages by promoting a more attentive, accommodating thinking style that produces superior outcomes.

It seems intriguing that despite our apparently never-ending quest for happiness, the human emotional repertoire remains heavily skewed towards negative emotions. Four of the six deeply ingrained basic emotions with distinct physiological substrates are negative ones – fear, anger, disgust and sadness - suggesting that these emotions were adaptive in the precarious ancestral environment, preparing the organism for flight, fight or avoidance in the face of challenges. It is interesting that even though sadness is clearly unpleasant and provides no hedonic benefit, it remains one of the most enduring and ubiquitous affective states (Ciarrochi, Forgas & Mayer, 2006). The possible adaptive functions and cognitive benefits of sadness are suggested in several recent experiments reviewed above, indicating that negative mood can reduce judgmental errors, improve eyewitness memory and produce more effective persuasive arguments. Such findings are broadly consistent with the notion that over evolutionary time, affective states functioned as automatic triggers to elicit cognitive and behavioural responses that are appropriate in a given situation.

It is noteworthy that most investigations of the cognitive and behavioral consequences of affect looked at mild, undifferentiated mood states, whereas research on the antecedents of emotion covers a wide variety of specific emotional states beyond positivity and negativity. We believe that an important direction for future research is to better integrate research on the elicitation of emotion with the study of the cognitive and behavioural consequences of affect. For example, several intriguing experiments now suggest that emotions also have reliable cognitive consequences for social judgments and decisions (Keltner, Ellsworth & Edwards, 1993).

In summary, this paper argued that different information processing strategies play a key role in explaining how affect influences social cognition and interpersonal behavior. The Affect Infusion Model in particular offers a parsimonious integrative account of the conditions likely to facilitate or inhibit affect infusion processes. Much of the evidence reviewed here suggests that affect infusion is most likely in conditions requiring constructive, substantive processing. Other processing strategies such as direct access or motivated processing result in the absence, or even reversal of affect infusion. Obviously a great deal more research is needed before we can fully understand the multiple influences that affect has on interpersonal behavior. Hopefully, this summary will help to stimulate further interest in this fascinating and important area of inquiry.

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