Altering emotions near the hand: Approach–avoidance swipe interactions modulate the perceived valence of emotional pictures.

Abstract

Approaching positive objects and avoiding negative ones are general action tendencies in human behavior. Interestingly, hand or arm positions connoting approach (arm flexion) or avoidance (arm extension) have also been shown to influence how the valence of a stimulus is evaluated. However, this causal effect on valence evaluation has been typically examined within experimental paradigms that do not require acting upon objects such as when touching or moving them. Accordingly, the current study attempts to integrate approach–avoidance paradigms with findings suggesting that manipulating visual stimuli directly by hand modulates their cognitive processing. Sixty participants evaluated the valence of 40 emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) twice, first after watching them on a monitor (i.e., baseline evaluations) and second after swiping them on a touchscreen, either toward or away from their body (i.e., interactions regulating distance). Our findings confirmed that, in contrast to just watching the pictures, (a) swiping positive pictures closer and negative pictures away led to positively change their valence evaluation (i.e., reinforcing the perceived valence of positive pictures and attenuating the perceived valence of negative pictures). However, (b) swiping negative pictures closer and positive pictures away barely changed their initial valence evaluation. Against this background, we argue that swiping emotional pictures closer or away directly by hand, may intensify the attentional prioritization to interactions leading to more desirable consequences, namely, approaching positive and avoiding negative stimuli.

Moved by Emotions: Affective Concepts Representing Personal Life Events Induce Freely Performed Steps in Line With Combined Sagittal and Lateral Space-Valence Associations

“…In contrast, avoidance behaviors serve to increase the distance to negative stimuli in order to minimize or prevent their unpleasant effects (cf. Cervera-Torres et al, 2019). Accordingly, it has been suggested that approach-avoidance behaviors may ground affective associations in terms of "close"-positive and "far"-negative (e.g., Van Boven et al, 2010; Davis et al, 2011).…”

Evaluating the feasibility and exploring the efficacy of an emotion-based approach-avoidance modification training (eAAMT) in the context of perceived stress in an adult sample — protocol of a parallel randomized controlled pilot study

“…This allows us to answer the question whether the eAAMT is helpful at all. As second comparator, we chose to use the swipe-based AAMT which is currently the most common AAMT variant on the smartphone [ 39 – 41 , 52 , 53 ]. The comparison with a swipe-based AAMT allows us to investigate whether the use of emotions in the AAMT provides additional benefit.…”

“…Variants of this method include using mouse movements (e.g., [ 37 ]) or moving a manikin towards or away from a stimulus through key presses (e.g., [ 38 ]). Recent technological developments allow an adaptation of the paradigm for use on the smartphone, where participants are asked to swipe the stimuli on a touchscreen instead of using a joystick [ 39 ], greatly facilitating the dissemination of the intervention compared to desktop-based AAMTs (e.g., [ 40 , 41 ]).…”

Revisiting the Watching eyes effect: how emotional expressions, sex, and age of watching eyes influence stereotypical statement endorsement

“…Affective valence, that is, how positive or negative we feel, in uences the way we interact with objects or people. Everyday objects elicit some form of valence [107], and we change our behaviors depending on how we perceive the valence [108]. We are generally skilled at evaluating affective valence when looking at realistic or cartoonish emotional expressions [102,[109][110][111], although exceptions occur when we confuse certain expressions (i.e., Surprise/fear) [112,113].…”