Transforming valences through transitive inference: How are faces emotionally dissonant?

Abstract

Information that is emotionally incongruous with self-concepts can produce feelings of unease. This implies that embedding incongruous information in newly formed relational structures would have little effect on their previous emotive properties. Alternatively, Relational Frame Theory highlights the importance of contextualized stimulus-stimulus relations, where the structure of a relational series is key in determining the function of its elements. To see whether series membership can mitigate 'dissonance' when a salient element is employed, the present investigation trained and tested a seven-term relational series (X>A>B>C>D>E>Y) using blurred faces as stimuli. Specifically, Stimuli X, A, B, D, E and Y were blurred unfamiliar faces and Stimulus C constituted of the participant's own blurred face, assumed to be more salient than the former. To assess how the valences of the related stimuli were transformed by relational series membership, self-report ratings and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were collected before and after training the X>A>B>C>D>E>Y series. These pre vs. post contrasts revealed that, for unfamiliar faces, stimulus valence transformed as a function of relational structure. Conversely, the lack of difference in pre vs. post contrasts of Stimulus C, which maintained a high valence, suggest that relational series membership may not suffice to mitigate emotionally dissonant information. ARTICLE HISTORY

Effects of Nodal Distance on Conditioned Stimulus Valences Across Time

“…During pre-training, subjects viewed naturally congruent stimulus sequences (e.g., melon→banana, apple→banana) followed by a card-sorting test where they had to pair congruent stimuli together (e.g., “apple” with “melon”). The pre-training phase was designed to help subjects understand task demands (Amd and Roche, 2017). During conditioning, subjects viewed face→word (US→CS0) and word→word (CS0→CS1, CS0→CS1+, CS1→CS2) sequences across 180 trials in randomized order.…”

“…After conditioning, all subjects produced card pairs from a deck containing all CS0 and CS2 stimuli as a test for contingency awareness for an unrelated investigation. As contingency awareness may not be critical for CS valence transformations (Amd and Baillet, 2019) and the present investigation was not concerned with sorting/transitivity performances anyway (but see Amd and Roche, 2017; Amd et al., 2018), no further mention of sorting performances are provided.…”

Reward Omissions Variably Augment Racial Bias along Political Ideology

“…One way to resolve this query could involve measurement of affect-associated neural components following the presentation of White or Black targets post reward frustration (Yu et al, 2014). Response topographies associated with affect can be detected neurally before they can be deliberately modulated (e.g., Amd & Baillet, 2019;Amd & Roche, 2017;Kuchinke & Mueller, 2019). The extent to which the present effects were moderated by self-control per se remains to be seen in a future work.…”

<strong>Valence generalization across non-recurring structures</strong>

“…In the meantime, readers interested in the framework proposed here are encouraged to consider how organizing and/or affective relations may be exploited to generate novel predictions. For instance, if valences generalize through nonconscious organizing relations, as our current work suggests, future works can attempt to 'isolate' said relations (e.g., by embodying them in contextual cuescf., Amd & Roche, 2017) to determine if said relations are valenced in the absence of any conditioning histories. A demonstration of constitutive affective properties across organizing relations, or at least their symbolic manifests, would vindicate the framework proposed here.…”