Affect‐as‐Information about Processing Styles: A Cognitive Malleability Approach

Abstract

Over the past three decades research has overwhelmingly supported the notion that positive affect promotes global, abstract, heuristic information processing whereas negative affect promotes local, detailed, and systematic processing. Yet despite the weight of the evidence, recent work suggests that such a direct relationship may be highly tenuous. In line with the affect-as-information account, we maintain that affective cues are adaptive and serve to provide individuals with information about their current psychological environment. We argue that these cues do not directly produce specific processing styles, but instead confer value on whatever processing inclination is dominant at the time. Positive affect (e.g., happiness) tends to promote reliance on currently dominant processing inclinations, whereas negative affect (e.g., sadness) tends to inhibit such reliance. Thus the impact of affect on processing is highly malleable and depends on both the type of processing that is currently active and the information provided by affective cues.

Meaning threat can promote peaceful, not only military‐based approaches to intergroup conflict: The moderating role of ingroup glorification

“…Third, the effects on conflict resolution were independent of attachment, whereas the effects on positive affect critically depended on attachment. Finally, the affect literature would make the exact opposite prediction about the role of affect in promoting or inhibiting predispositions; a large body of research suggests that positive affect promotes dominant inclinations (e.g., Huntsinger, Sinclair, Dunn, & Clore, ; for reviews see Huntsinger, Isbell, & Clore, and Isbell, Lair, & Rovenpor, ), whereas in the present study it was the absence of positive affect—under meaning threat—that accentuated high and low glorifiers' preexisting tendencies. If anything, differences in affect likely weaken our effects, rather than account for them.…”

Feeling and thinking: An affect‐as‐cognitive‐feedback account

“…Because existing theories predict fixed effects of positive and negative affect on cognition, a different perspective on how affect regulates cognition may be useful, one that can account for malleability in the link between affect and cognition. Such a perspective can be found in the recently proposed affect‐as‐cognitive‐feedback account (Huntsinger, Isbell, & Clore, ; also see Clore & Huntsinger, ; Huntsinger, ; Isbell, Lair, & Rovenpor, ).…”

“…Though the information conveyed by affect about accessible thoughts and responses may be experienced in different ways, in each case, it should adjust whether people rely on such thoughts and responses. In effect, positive affect serves as a green light, or a “go signal”, that validates and facilitates the use of accessible mental content and processing styles, whereas most negative affect serves as a red light, or a “stop signal”, that invalidates and inhibits the use of such content and processing styles (e.g., Clore & Huntsinger, , ; Clore et al, ; Isbell & Lair, ; Isbell et al, ; Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, ; Wyer, Clore, & Isbell, ).…”

“…There are now many studies showing that anger acts like happiness in its effects on cognitive processing, including elicitation of a global focus. The experience of anger, for example, is associated with reliance on stereotypes (Bodenhausen et al, ), heuristics (Ask & Granhag, 2007; Small & Lerner, ), greater attention to peripheral cues in a persuasion context (Bodenhausen et al, ; Tiedens & Linton, ), more abstract, global self‐descriptions (Isbell et al, ), and encourages reliance on chronically accessible scripts (Tiedens, ). Fear, by contrast, is associated with a local, systematic processing style and therefore a greater reliance on detailed information when making decisions, a focus on argument quality in a persuasion context, and a narrowed focus of attention (Baron, Logan, Lilly, Inman, & Brennan, 1994; Bohner & Weinerth, ; Easterbrook, ; Parker & Isbell, 2010; Tiedens & Linton, ).…”

“Fury, us”: Anger as a basis for new group self-categories

“…Although previous research has examined the effect of emotion and mood on categorization and information processing (e.g., Bramesfeld & Gasper, 2008;Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2010;Gasper & Clore, 2002;Isbell, Lair, & Anger and emergent self-categorization 4 Rovenpor, 2013; Schwarz & Clore, 2002;Zivot, Cohen, & Kapucu, 2013), this has not directly addressed the role of emotion in self-categorization, particularly in interaction with emotional information coming from others. The only existing test of this hypothesis has shown that emotions -and anger in particular -strengthen pre-existing self-categorization when the emotional reaction is shared within this group (Livingstone, Spears, Manstead, Bruder, & Shepherd, 2011).…”