Affective stimuli and social information processing – SATIS

Recent research suggests that the mere presence of affective stimuli (i.e., stimuli that possess a clear and unambiguous affective connotation) in our environment strongly influences our judgment (e.g., Chartrand, van Baaren & Bargh, 2006; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Niedenthal, 1990; Ric, 2004), the way we process social information (e.g., Ruys & Stapel, 2008a; Soldat & Sinclair, 2001), as well as our behavior (Alexopoulos & Ric, 2007; Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005), even when these stimuli are not perceived consciously and do not impact conscious affective feelings (e.g., Ric, 2004; Soldat & Sinclair, 2001; Winkielman et al., 2005).
The theoretical explanations that have been offered for these effects are controversial (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Ric, 2004; Ruys & Stapel, 2008) and very few empirical studies have proposed to explore thoroughly the hypothesized underlying processes. The aim of this research project is to shed light on how the presence of affective stimuli in the environment influences the way people feel, process incoming information, form judgment, and behave in social settings. This research program explores the basic affective and behavioral reactions to these stimuli as well as two theoretically relevant moderators: duration of exposure and attention orientation. The effects of affective stimuli will be tested in one correlational and 10 experimental laboratory studies.

The program is structured in four main steps. As a staring point, we will conduct an extensive pilot-study that will allow us to select the essential affective stimuli that will be used throughout the project. Parts of this first task we will be conducted on every research institution implied in this project. In Task 2, we will primarily on focus on prime exposure duration and its effects on processing style. This is first motivated by the fact that previous research studying the impact of affective stimuli on information processing relied on what seems rather arbitrary duration display (Ruys & Stapel, 2008a). Our second motivation is to test our contention that the earliest possible discrimination of a stimulus is an approach / avoidance reaction (Zajonc, 1980).

In Task 2 and Task 3, we will focus on another potential moderator of the effects of affective cues on processing style, namely the orientation of attention induced by the primed stimuli. We think that one factor that drives the effects is the type of stimuli that are used to unconsciously prime affective information. Whereas some researchers used personality traits (e.g., stubborn, honest) as affective cues (Ruys & Stapel, 2008), others used substantives (Chartrand et al., 2006; Ric, 2004). This could have important consequences as the former could orient attention toward the self and the latter could orient attention toward the environment. This distinction is crucial as it might be one determinant of which aspect (affective vs. behavioral) is set in motion after exposure to unconscious affective cues.

Task 4 will be entirely dedicated to the development and the construction of a paradigm that allows to reliably measure approach / avoidance reactions that can be elicited by a stimulus. The final step of our project will be concerned with the processes underlying the effects of unconscious affective cues on information processing. Here, we are interested in the low-level processes involved in the exposure of unconscious affective cues. As already mentioned, these include the emotional feeling and the behavioral facets. In this last task, we will compare various exposure durations (10 vs. 20. vs. 40 vs. 120ms) in order to capture the dynamics of the processing of affective cues, at the behavioral and at the experiential feeling level. Our aim is to establish a time course model of the unfolding of these components in the processing of affective cues.