Approach motivation as incentive salience: perceptual sources of evidence in relation to positive word primes

Subliminal affective priming effect: Dissociated processes for intense versus normal facial expressions

Positive vs. negative intense-facial expressions are difficult to explicitly distinguish; yet, whether they dissociate when subliminally presented remains unclear. Through three experiments using affective priming paradigms, we assessed how intense facial expressions, when presented briefly (17 ms) and masked, influenced following neutral ambiguous words (Experiment 1) or visible facial expressions (Experiments 2&3). We also compared these results with those of using normal facial expressions as primes in each experiment. All experiments indicated masked affective priming effects (biasing valence judgement of neutral words or facilitating reaction time to faces with the same valence as the prime) in normal facial expression, but not those intense ones. Experiment 3 using event related potentials (ERPs) further revealed that two ERP components N250 and LPP were consistent with behavioral changes in the normal condition (larger when valences of primes and targets were different), but inconsistent in the intense condition. Taken together, our results provided behavioral and neural evidence for distinctive processing between normal and intense facial expressions under masked condition.

Perceived social integration predicts future physical activity through positive affect and spontaneous thoughts

The present research evaluated the social, affective, and cognitive processes underlying sustained patterns of health behavior as articulated by the upward spiral theory of lifestyle change. Specifically, we tested whether positive affect experienced during physical activity changes over time in tandem with perceived social integration (PSI), and whether PSI is associated with future activity indirectly through sociality during physical activity, positive affect during physical activity, and positive spontaneous thoughts about physical activity. Adult participants (N = 226) reported daily on their PSI, physical activity behavior, and affect during physical activity for 11 weeks. Once every 2 weeks, they also reported on features of a specific bout of physical activity, including how social it was, positive affect during the activity, and positivity of spontaneous thoughts about physical activity. Multilevel modeling of daily reports over the 11 weeks revealed that as participants' PSI increased, so did their positive affect during physical activity. Further, structural equation modeling of specific reports revealed a significant indirect effect of PSI on future activity through sociality during an intervening instance of physical activity, positive affect experienced during that activity, and positive spontaneous thoughts about physical activity. The findings reported herein provide evidence consistent with the upward spiral theory of lifestyle change and reveal affective and cognitive mechanisms by which social processes may contribute to positive health behavior change and maintenance: namely, positive affect during physical activity and spontaneous thoughts about physical activity. Beyond its utility for evaluating theory, the present study may inform subsequent research aimed at developing sustainable behavior-change interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Positive affective processes underlie positive health behaviour change

Positive health behaviours such as physical activity can prevent or reverse many chronic conditions, yet a majority of people fall short of leading a healthy lifestyle. Recent discoveries in affective science point to promising approaches to circumvent barriers to lifestyle change. Here, we present a new theoretical framework that integrates scientific knowledge about positive affect with that on implicit processes. The upward spiral theory of lifestyle change explains how positive affect can facilitate long-term adherence to positive health behaviours. The inner loop of this spiral model identifies nonconscious motives as a central mechanism of behavioural maintenance. Positive affect experienced during health behaviours increases incentive salience for cues associated with those behaviours, which in turn, implicitly guides attention and the everyday decisions to repeat those behaviours. The outer loop represents the evidence-backed claim, based on Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory, that positive affect builds a suite of endogenous resources, which may in turn amplify the positive affect experienced during positive health behaviours and strengthen the nonconscious motives. We offer published and preliminary evidence in favour of the theory, contrast it to other dominant theories of health behaviour change, and highlight attendant implications for interventions that merit testing.

Do positive spontaneous thoughts function as incentive salience?

The present work explores the theoretical relationship between positive spontaneous thoughts and incentive salience-a psychological property thought to energize wanting and approach motivation by rendering cues that are associated with enjoyment more likely to stand out to the individual when subsequently encountered in the environment (Berridge, 2007). We reasoned that positive spontaneous thoughts may at least be concomitants of incentive salience, and as such, they might likewise mediate the effect of liking on wanting. In Study 1, 103 adults recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk reported on key aspects of 10 everyday activities. As predicted, positive spontaneous thoughts mediated the relationship between liking an activity in the past and wanting to engage in it in the future. In Study 2, 99 undergraduate students viewed amusing and humorless cartoons and completed a thought-listing task, providing experimental evidence for the causal effect of liking on positive spontaneous thoughts. In Study 3, we tested whether positive spontaneous thoughts play an active role in energizing wanting rather than merely co-occurring with (inferred) incentive salience. In that experiment involving 80 undergraduates, participants who were led to believe that their spontaneous thoughts about a target activity were especially positive planned to devote more time to that activity over the coming week than participants who received no such information about their spontaneous thoughts. Collectively, these findings suggest that positive spontaneous thoughts may play an important role in shaping approach motivation. Broader implications and future directions in the study of positive spontaneous thoughts are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Interpersonal Arrogance and the Incentive Salience of Power Versus Affiliation Cues

The arrogance dimension of the circumplex contrasts people who seemingly value power over affiliation (high arrogance) versus those who do not (low arrogance). Following this line of thinking, and building on an incentive salience model of approach motivation, three studies (total N = 284) examined the differential processing of power versus affiliation stimuli in categorization, perception and approach–avoidance paradigms. All studies found interactions of the same type. In study 2, for example, people high in arrogance perceived power stimuli to be larger than affiliation stimuli, but this differential pattern was not evident at low arrogance levels. People high, but not low, in arrogance also approached power stimuli faster than affiliation stimuli in a motor movement task (study 3). The results contribute to a process–based understanding of how interpersonal arrogance functions while linking such differences to the manner in which power versus affiliation cues are perceived and reacted to. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology

Biases for affective versus sexual content in multidimensional scaling analysis: an individual difference perspective

Visual sexual stimuli can motivate sexual behaviors that can risk or enhance health. How one allocates attention to a sexually motivating stimulus may be important for predicting its effect on sexual feelings, sexual risk behaviors, and sexual problems. A large sample (N = 157) of men and women rated the similarity of all possible pairs of photographs of women, which had been pretested to vary in their sexual and affective content. Multidimensional scaling was used to extract two dimensions of sex and affect, including the extent to which each person relied on each dimension in making their similarity judgments. These individual weights were then used to predict sexual variables of interest. Participants who relied more on the affect information judging photograph similarity were more likely to be female, viewed erotica less frequently, reported fewer sexual partners, reported less sexual desire, and more sexual problems. Those who relied more on the erotic content in making their similarity judgments were more likely to be male, viewed more erotica weekly, experienced higher sexual desire, and were more likely to have taken an HIV test. The "double edge sword" of attention weight to affect in sexual cues is discussed for its potential to both enhance and harm sexual health.

Late positive potential to explicit sexual images associated with the number of sexual intercourse partners

Risky sexual behaviors typically occur when a person is sexually motivated by potent, sexual reward cues. Yet, individual differences in sensitivity to sexual cues have not been examined with respect to sexual risk behaviors. A greater responsiveness to sexual cues might provide greater motivation for a person to act sexually; a lower responsiveness to sexual cues might lead a person to seek more intense, novel, possibly risky, sexual acts. In this study, event-related potentials were recorded in 64 men and women while they viewed a series of emotional, including explicit sexual, photographs. The motivational salience of the sexual cues was varied by including more and less explicit sexual images. Indeed, the more explicit sexual stimuli resulted in enhanced late positive potentials (LPP) relative to the less explicit sexual images. Participants with fewer sexual intercourse partners in the last year had reduced LPP amplitude to the less explicit sexual images than the more explicit sexual images, whereas participants with more partners responded similarly to the more and less explicit sexual images. This pattern of results is consistent with a greater responsivity model. Those who engage in more sexual behaviors consistent with risk are also more responsive to less explicit sexual cues.

Perceptual Negativity Predicts Greater Reactivity to Negative Events in Daily Life

Reinforcement sensitivity theory includes the idea that people differ in their sensitivity to negative events, but relevant process-based assessments have not been developed. The present studies assessed sensitivity to negative events in terms of the extent to which negative word stimuli were perceived to be larger than neutral word stimuli. There was a general tendency to overestimate the size of negative relative to neutral words, but individuals differed substantially in this form of what is termed perceptual negativity. Of more importance, two studies (total N = 151) found systematic relationships between individual differences in perceptual negativity and reactivity to negative events in daily diary protocols. Study 1 found that within-person variations in the occurrence of daily negative events undermined goal-related optimism to a greater extent at higher, relative to lower, levels of perceptual negativity. Study 2 conceptually replicated this interaction in the context of within-person associations between the occurrence of daily negative events and antisocial behavior. These findings are important in advancing reinforcement sensitivity theory, in operationalizing a particular component of it, and in extending it to reactivity processes in daily life.

Understanding Personality and Predicting Outcomes: The Utility of Cognitive-Behavioral Probes of Approach and Avoidance Motivation

Approach and avoidance motivation may represent important explanatory constructs in understanding how individuals differ. Such constructs have primarily been assessed in self-reported terms, but there are limitations to self-reports of motivation. Accordingly, the present review concentrates on the potential utility of implicit cognitive-behavioral probes of approach and avoidance motivation in modeling and understanding individual differences. The review summarizes multiple lines of research that have documented the utility of such probes to the personality-processing interface. Although multiple gaps to our knowledge exist, and are acknowledged, the value of such implicit cognitive-behavioral assessments is emphasized both in modeling multiple sub-components of approach and avoidance motivation and in showing that such tendencies matter in ways that transcend momentary experiences or manipulations.

The evolutionary origins of mood and its disorders

The term 'mood' in its scientific usage refers to relatively enduring affective states that arise when negative or positive experience in one context or time period alters the individual's threshold for responding to potentially negative or positive events in subsequent contexts or time periods. The capacity for mood appears to be phylogenetically widespread and the mechanisms underlying it are highly conserved in diverse animals, suggesting it has an important adaptive function. In this review, we discuss how moods can be classified across species, and what the selective advantages of the capacity for mood are. Core moods can be localised within a two-dimensional continuous space, where one axis represents sensitivity to punishment or threat, and the other, sensitivity to reward. Depressed mood and anxious mood represent two different quadrants of this space. The adaptive function of mood is to integrate information about the recent state of the environment and current physical condition of the organism to fine-tune its decisions about the allocation of behavioural effort. Many empirical observations from both humans and non-human animals are consistent with this model. We discuss the implications of this adaptive approach to mood systems for mood disorders in humans.

So far so good: emotion in the peripersonal/extrapersonal space

Current accounts of spatial cognition and human-object interaction suggest that the representation of peripersonal space depends on an action-specific system that remaps its representation according to action requirements. Here we demonstrate that this mechanism is sensitive to knowledge about properties of objects. In two experiments we explored the interaction between physical distance and object attributes (functionality, desirability, graspability, etc.) through a reaching estimation task in which participants indicated if objects were near enough to be reached. Using both a real and a cutting-edge digital scenario, we demonstrate that perceived reaching distance is influenced by ease of grasp and the affective valence of an object. Objects with a positive affective valence tend to be perceived reachable at locations at which neutral or negative objects are perceived as non-reachable. In addition to this, reaction time to distant (non-reachable) positive objects suggests a bias to perceive positive objects as closer than negative and neutral objects (exp. 2). These results highlight the importance of the affective valence of objects in the action-specific mapping of the peripersonal/extrapersonal space system.

High arousal words influence subsequent processing of neutral information: evidence from event-related potentials

Recent data suggest that word valence modulates subsequent cognitive processing. However, the contribution of word arousal is less understood. In this study, behavioral and electrophysiological measures to neutral nouns and pseudowords that were preceded by either a high-arousal or a low-arousal word were recorded during a lexical decision task. Effects were found at an electrophysiological level. Target words and pseudowords elicited enhanced N100 amplitudes when they were preceded by high- compared to low-arousing words. This effect may reflect perceptual potentiation during the allocation of attentional resources when the new stimulus is processed. Enhanced amplitudes in a late positivity when target words and pseudowords followed high-arousal primes were also observed, which could be related to sustained attention during supplementary analyses at a post-lexical level.