Detailed
Contents and Chapter Outlines
Chapter
1. Introduction and a historical overview
Joseph Forgas, University of New
South Wales, Sydney, Australia
This chapter will set the scene for the book by providing
a brief historical overview of the links between affect
and cognition in psychological theorizing. The origins of
contemporary approaches to affect and cognition in
earlier philosophical treatments, and various
psychodynamic and conditioning formulations will be
briefly described. This chapter will review the
background of recent attempts to link affect and
cognition within a unified conceptual system, and some of
the early empirical evidence relevant to this enterprise
will be reviewed. The communalities between the various
theoretical formulations represented in this volume will
be highlighted, and the prospects for a comprehensive and
integrated theory of affect and cognition will be
discussed.
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Part I - Fundamental Issues: The
Interplay of Affect and Cognition
Chapter 2. Nonconscious and
Noncognitive Affect
R..B. Zajonc, Stanford
University
In this chapter Robert Zajonc returns to the
theme of his highly influential paper in 1980
arguing that ‘preferences need no
inferences’ almost twenty years later,
further developing the argument that affective
states can exert an influence on behaviour in the
absence of cognition and awareness. This chapter
critically reviews recent developments consistent
with this view. In particular, Zajonc supports
his arguments with neuro-anatomic,
neuro-chemical, neuro-physiological, and
behavioural evidence. He also offers some new
ideas about the neural independence of affect
from cognition in the context of neural
plasticity.
Chapter 3. Challenge and threat:
The interplay of affect and cognition
Jim Blascovich, University of
California, Santa Barbara
Jim Blascovich has developed an influential
biopsychosocial model of affect and arousal
regulation. This chapter will further develop
this theory as it applies to social cognitive
phenomena and presents the results of a series of
recent psychophysiological experiments designed
to identify distinct physiological markers
associated with affective experiences such as
challenge and threat. Specifically, these studies
find that during experiences of challenge
relatively strong increases in cardiac
performance are accompanied by arterial dilation,
while during threat relatively weak increases in
cardiac performance are accompanied by unchanging
or increased arterial constriction. Experimental
results also show that a combination of
intrapersonal and interpersonal factors, many of
them social cognitive in character mediate these
responses. The implications of this research for
the interaction of affect and cognitive
appraisals and resulting motivational states will
be discussed.
Chapter 4. Affect and appraisal
Craig A. Smith, Vanderbilt
University
The role of cognitive appraisals in interpreting
events and generating appropriate affective
reactions has been the focus of intensive
research by Craig Smith and his collaborators,
who are perhaps the major contributors to this
influential literature. This chapter will present
a new, process model of appraisal which, beyond
the structural content of appraisal, attempts to
describe the cognitive processes by which
emotion-eliciting appraisals are generated.
Specifically, schematic processing will be
proposed as a mechanism whereby memory
representations associated with previous
affective experiences can be automatically primed
and activated, and through which appraisal
information can initiate emotional reactions
without conscious, verbally mediated cognitive
processing. The chapter emphasizes
emotion-related memory structures in
understanding appraisal and emotion elicitation,
and thus represents a major new development in
appraisal theories.
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Part II - The Informational Role
of Affect
Chapter 5. Cognitive and Clinical
Perspectives on Mood Dependent Memory
Eric Eich, University of
British Columbia
Recent years have witnessed a renaissance of
research interested in the interplay between
cognitive and emotional processes. Much research
has centered on mood dependent memory
(MDM)—the observation that events
experienced in specific mood state are most
retrievable in the mood. Eric Eich provides a
comprehensive review and integration of this
research. He describes two approaches to studying
MDM. One approach features laboratory studies
involving experimentally induced moods and
focuses on cognitive factors that play pivotal
roles in the occurrence of mood dependence,
whereas the other approach concentrates on
clinical studies involving naturally occurring
moods. Eich illustrates the advantages in
studying MDM using both approaches, and reviews
the theoretical implications of MDM research for
an integrated understanding of the interplay
between affect and cognition.
Chapter 6. Some Conditions
Affecting Overcorrection of the
Judgment-Distorting Influence of One’s
Feelings
Leonard Berkowitz, University
of Wisconsin-Madison
A great deal of research suggests that moods lead
to congruent cognitive biases. In contrast,
Leonard Berkowitz’s research suggests that
there are times when this bias is reversed, that
is, when mood actually leads to incongruent
cognitive outcomes. Across a wide variety of mood
inductions and judgment contexts,
Berkowitz’s studies show that when people
are highly aware of their feelings or are highly
motivated to be accurate, they attempt to
"correct for" their mood and
consequently make mood-incongruent judgments. The
paper concludes with a model of overcorrection
and an attempt to reconcile mood-incongruent
findings with mood-congruent findings.
Chapter 7. Mood as Input: A
Configural View of Mood Effects
Leonard L. Martin, University
of Georgia
Most models of mood and cognition treat one
effect as basic (eg., mood congruent evaluation)
and treat all other effects as exceptions to the
rule. Lenny Martin’s mood as input model, in
contrast, accounts for a variety of mood effects
through a single mechanism (i.e., role
fulfilment). He assumes that moods influence
evaluations when people ask "what would I
feel if…." with the question being
filled in with the nature of the target and the
specific judgment. An evaluation is rendered
subjectively when people compare their current
feelings with expected feelings. Favourable
evaluations arise to the extent that the
person’s feelings are congruent with what
would be expected if the target had fulfilled its
role, whereas negative evaluations arise to the
extent that the person’s feelings are
incongruent with what would be expected if the
target had fulfilled its role. Martin discusses a
number of recent experiments that support his
mood-as-input model.
Chapter 8. Affective Forecasting
and Durability Bias: The Problem of the Invisible
Shield
Dan Gilbert, Harvard
University
This chapter argues that the ability to
transform, invent, and ignore emotionally
relevant information provides an invisible shield
against enduring negative affect, but that the
invisibility of that shield promotes a durability
bias in affective forecasting (eg., how long will
you be sad?). Dan Gilbert presents evidence which
suggests that people overestimate the duration of
their affective reactions to the dissolution of a
romantic relationship, the failure to achieve
tenure, an electoral defeat, the receipt of
negative personality feedback, and rejection by a
prospective employer. He also describes studies
that suggest that these overestimations are
caused by the participants’ failures to
recognize prospectively that they would
ameliorate negative affect retrospectively. These
motivated strategies of dealing with affective
information are related to other recent
conceptualizations of the affect-cognition
relationship represented in this volume.
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Part III - Affect and Information
Processing
Chapter 9. Mood and general
knowledge structures: Happy moods and their
impact on information processing
Herbert Bless, University of
Trier, Germany
Why are happy people more likely than sad people
to rely on general knowledge structures, such as
heuristics and stereotypes, when making
judgments? Previous researchers have explained
this effect by assuming that happy mood reduces
processing motivation or capacity. In this
chapter, Herbert Bless argues against this
explanation and proposes instead that individuals
are more likely to process new information in a
bottom-up fashion when the situation is perceived
as problematic, which is partially a function of
being in a sad mood. In contrast, individuals are
more likely to rely on pre-existing general
knowledge structures when the situation is
perceived as safe, which is partially a function
of being in a happy mood. Bless presents a series
of recent experiments that support his
theoretical position, and integrates his model
with other recent processing theories.
Chapter 10. A Connectionist
Approach to Understanding the Impact of Mood on
Cognitive Functions of Assimilation and
Accommodation
Klaus Fiedler, University of
Heidelberg, Germany
Klaus Fiedler presents his new, dual-force model
of how mood states influence cognitive style and
memory performance. Based on the assumption that
any cognitive process can be decomposed into two
complementary components, conservation and active
generation, this model proposes that positive
mood states support the second component
(inferences, creativity, top-down inferences),
whereas negative mood states support the first
component (conserving stimulus details,
vigilance, sticking to the facts). The processes
of accommodation and assimilation is modelled
within a connectionist framework and it is shown
that the model can explain numerous empirical
findings, including enhanced stereotype and
priming effects under positive mood; the
sensitivity of negative mood subjects to strong
and weak arguments in persuasion; constructive
memory effects and enhanced generation effects in
positive mood; and the accentuation of mood
congruence for self-generated information. In
addition to providing new, parsimonious
interpretations of previous findings, the model
makes a number of novel predictions and
highlights communalities between existing
affect/cognition theories.
Chapter 11. The role of different
processing strategies in mediating mood effects
on cognition
Joseph P. Forgas, University
of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
This chapter will outline a multi-process model
of affect and social cognition, based on a review
of the historical and theoretical background of
the field, as well as the results of an extensive
research program. Specifically, the model
attempts to deal with the following questions:
What processing strategies are available to
people when performing a social judgment? Under
what condition are they most likely to be used?
What is the role of affect in people's processing
preferences? How does affect influence the
outcome of social judgments under each of the
processing alternatives? The model distinguishes
between four alternative processing strategies
available to judges: (1) direct access of
crystallized judgments, (2) motivated processing
in the service of a pre-existing goal, (3)
heuristic or simplified processing, and (4)
substantive or elaborate processing. The theory
also specifies how features of the target, the
judge and the situation are likely to influence
processing choices. The chapter reviews numerous
studies on affective influences on social
judgments and decisions, and presents integrative
evidence for both the informational and the
processing consequences of moods.
Chapter 12. Emotional and
Evaluative Effects of Regulatory Focus: Promotion
and Prevention as Distinct Motivational Systems
Tory Higgins, Columbia
University
According to Tory Higgins’ influential
theory, two regulatory systems have a crucial
impact on our emotional responses and
evaluations. Promotion regulatory focus is
concerned with advancement, growth, and
accomplishment, whereas prevention regulatory
focus is concerned with security, safety, and
responsibility. Tory Higgins suggests that
emotional responses to goal attainment vary as a
function of regulatory focus. As promotion focus
increases, goal attainment or non-attainment
produces affective responses on the
cheerfulness/dejection dimension. When prevention
focus increases, affective responses to goal
attainment are more likely to vary on the
quiescence/agitation dimension. He also found
that people with a strong promotion focus are
more sensitive to evaluating attitude objects
along the cheerfulness-dejection dimension,
whereas people with a strong prevention focus are
more sensitive to evaluating attitude objects
along the quiescence-agitation dimension. The
chapter discusses numerous other research
findings related to this regulatory model, and
integrative links between this theory and other
conceptualizations are highlighted.
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Part IV - Affect and Social
Knowledge Structures
Chapter 13. Self-Organization in
Emotional Contexts
Carolin Showers, University
of Wisconsin
Carolin Showers discusses her intriguing work on
self-concept organisation and mood. According to
her model, there are two types of
self-organisation. In compartmentalized
self-organisation, the knowledge that is included
in any particular category is either uniformly
positive or negative; in integrative
self-organisation, the knowledge in a category is
both positive and negative. In a wide ranging
series of experiments, involving experimental,
longitudinal, and physiological methodologies,
Showers has shown that compartmentalization may
be effective for dealing with negative mood and
negative beliefs about the self or someone else.
It may be an easy and efficient type of
organisation. However when compartmentalization
breaks down (e.g., when negative self-aspects are
important and unavoidable), then it may be worth
the effort to integrate positive and negative
self-beliefs.
Chapter 14. Prologue to a Unified
Theory of Affect, Attitudes, Stereotypes, and
Self-Concept
Anthony Greenwald, University
of Washington
Tony Greenwald presents an exciting new theory
that seeks to unify three of social
psychology’s central cognitive constructs -
attitude, stereotype, and self-concept. The
theory proposes that self-esteem and self-concept
distort the semantic space of social objects in
two ways. First, social objects that are linked
to self are pulled toward the position of self in
semantic space. Second, objects that are
dissociated from self are repelled from the
self’s position in this space. Distortions
may occur in the activity, potency, or evaluative
semantic dimension, but are most likely to occur
in the evaluative (affective) dimension.
Greenwald reviews recent findings that support
the unified theory.
Chapter 15. Interpersonal
Emotions, Social Cognition, and Self-Relevant
Thought
Mark Leary, Wake Forest
University
Although many emotions may be experienced as a
result of either impersonal or interpersonal
events, certain affective states occur only as
the result of real, anticipated, or imagined
interactions with other people (e.g., loneliness,
embarrassment, and jealousy). Much theory and
research has examined the cognitive processes
that precipitate social emotions, but little
attention has been devoted to the reciprocal
effects of interpersonal emotions on cognition.
Mark Leary reviews recent work on the role of
social emotions in how people think about
themselves and about their relationships with
others. He then provides a new theoretical
framework for understanding the reciprocal
effects of interpersonal emotions, social
cognitions, and self-relevant thoughts.
Chapter 16. Emotional response
categorization
Paula Niedenthal, Indiana
University
Traditional theories of categorization based on
perceptual similarity ignore an important basis
for conceptual structure: the discrete emotion
that a stimulus elicits in the perceiver. In this
chapter Paula Niedenthal argues that emotional
responses are salient features of stimuli that
can be used as the basis of categorization. A
series of experiments are summarized,
investigating the nature and theoretical
characteristics of emotional response categories,
and exploring the conditions under which they are
used. These studies also show that emotional
perceivers are more likely to base their
categorization on affective characteristics.
Multidimensional scaling analyses showed that
emotional categorization is not only tenable, but
is also necessary for a complete account of
conceptual coherence.
Chapter 17. Integration and
conclusions
Joseph P. Forgas, University
of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
The last chapter will present an overview and
conceptual integration of the papers presented
here. The contributions within each of the four
sections of the book will be critically reviewed,
and integrative principles capable of linking
them will be highlighted. The chapter will also
discuss parallel developments in other fields
(such as cognitive science, sociology,
developmental psychology and clinical psychology)
that have implications for an emerging
understanding of the affect-cognition interface.
Finally, the chapter will also discuss the
specific implications of the chapters presented
here for a number of substantive areas of
research in psychology, and future prospects for
affect-cognition research will be outlined.
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