Implicit affective cues and attentional tuning: An integrative review.

Abstract

A large and growing number of studies support the notion that arousing positive emotional states expand, and that arousing negative states constrict, the scope of attention on both the perceptual and conceptual levels. However, these studies have predominantly involved the manipulation or measurement of conscious emotional experiences (e.g., subjective feelings of happiness or anxiety). This raises the question: Do cues that are merely associated with benign versus threatening situations, but that do not elicit conscious feelings of positive or negative emotional arousal, independently expand or contract attentional scope? Integrating theoretical advances in affective neuroscience, positive psychology, and social cognition, it is proposed that rudimentary intero-and exteroceptive stimuli may indeed become associated with the onset of arousing positive or negative emotional states and/or with appraisals that the environment is benign or threatening and thereby come to moderate the scope of attention in the absence of conscious emotional experience. Specifically, implicit "benign situation" cues are posited to broaden, and implicit "threatening situation" cues to narrow, the range of both perceptual as well as conceptual attentional selection. An extensive array of research findings involving a diverse set of such implicit affective cues (e.g., enactment of approach and avoidance behaviors, incidental exposure to colors signaling safety versus danger) is marshaled in support of this proposition. Potential alternative explanations for and moderators of these attentional tuning effects, as well as their higher-level neuropsychological underpinnings, are also discussed along with prospective extensions to a range of other situational cues and domains of social cognitive processing.Decades of research have suggested that affective experiences, such as emotional feelings and moods, influence not only the content, but the structure of thought, shaping how individuals think as opposed to merely

Fluid movement and creativity.

“…Fluid movement enhanced creative but not analytic performance (only the former requires fluid thought), and the influence of fluid movement on creativity was not a result of enhanced conscious experiences of positive affect. One possibility that remains and awaits future research is that fluid movement serves as an implicit affective cue, suggesting a safe environment where explorative creative processing is encouraged (see Friedman & Förster, 2010;Topolinski & Reber, 2010).…”

Good vibrations: Global processing can increase the pleasantness of touch

“…For example, real-world variables, such as the colour of packaging could be manipulated to trigger global processing (see Friedman & Forster, 2010;and Forster & Dannenberg, 2010, p182) in order to increase consumer's enjoyment of "tactile" products such as skin creams. According to the GLOMOsys model (Forster & Dannenberg, 2010), global-local carry-over effects should occur across sensory modalities, therefore future studies could investigate whether priming global/local processing in the auditory, or olfactory senses (e.g., by asking participants to rate the pleasantness of a piece of music/smell, or distinguish the component parts), also affects the subsequent pleasantness of touch.…”

Color in achievement contexts in humans

“…This attention bias was assessed with a visual matching task (see Kimchi & Palmer, 1982) presumed to reflect automatic perceptual and attentional processing (Andres & Fernandes, 2006;Poirel, Pineau, & Mellet, 2006). Previous research showed that individuals with a constricted attentional focus due to avoidance motivation exhibit a local relative to global processing bias (Friedman & Förster, 2010;Gasper, 2004). Performing the first step of the experimental chain approach revealed the predicted effect: Red negatively influenced intellectual performance compared to a gray baseline condition (Maier et al, 2008).…”

“…Accordingly, viewing red in an achievement context is posited to impair performance attainment because it evokes avoidance, which in turn, is inimical to performance. The activation, operation, and influence of avoidance motivation in this hypothesized red effect is thought to take place outside of conscious awareness; that is, it acts in an implicit rather than explicit fashion (see Friedman & Förster, 2010).…”

“…Accordingly, viewing red in an achievement context is posited to impair performance attainment because it evokes avoidance, which in turn, is inimical to performance. The activation, operation, and influence of avoidance motivation in this hypothesized red effect is thought to take place outside of conscious awareness; that is, it acts in an implicit rather than explicit fashion (see Friedman & Förster, 2010).Researchers have begun to explore such red associations in different variants of achievement situations, such as sporting contests, exam-like situations, and competence evaluations within impression formation scenarios. In the remainder of the chapter we provide an overview of empirical work on the effects of red on sport performance, cognitive mechanisms, behavioral processes, and psychophysiological activity in evaluative contexts.…”