Positivity Can Cue Familiarity

Metacognitive Feelings: A Predictive-Processing Perspective

Metacognitive feelings are affective experiences that concern the subject's mental processes and capacities. Paradigmatic examples include the feeling of familiarity, the feeling of confidence, or the tip-of-the-tongue experience. In this article, we advance an account of metacognitive feelings based on the predictive-processing framework. The core tenet of predictive processing is that the brain is a hierarchical hypothesis-testing mechanism, predicting sensory input on the basis of prior experience and updating predictions on the basis of the incoming prediction error. According to the proposed account, metacognitive feelings arise out of a process in which visceral changes serve as cues to predict the error dynamics relating to a particular mental process. The expected rate of prediction-error reduction corresponds to the valence at the core of the emerging metacognitive feeling. Metacognitive feelings use prediction dynamics to model the agent's situation in a way that is both descriptive and directive. Thus, metacognitive feelings are not only an appraisal of ongoing cognitive performance but also a set of action policies. These action policies span predictive trajectories across bodily action, mental action, and interoceptive changes, which together transform the epistemic landscape within which metacognitive feelings unfold.

Detecting valence from unidentified images: A link between familiarity and positivity in recognition without identification

Research using the Recognition Without Identification paradigm (Cleary & Greene, 2000, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26[4], 1063-1069; Peynircioǧlu, 1990, Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 493-500) has found that participants can discriminate between old and new stimuli even when the stimuli are obscured to a degree that they are unidentifiable. This methodology has been adapted in the past by using heavily obscured threatening and nonthreatening images and asking participants to try to identify each image followed by a familiarity rating of the image. Past results showed that threatening images that were not able to be identified were rated as more familiar than nonthreatening images that were not able to be identified (Cleary et al., 2013, Memory & Cognition, 41, 989-999). The current study used a similar methodology to explore the possibility that a sense of familiarity can serve to guide our attention toward potential threats in the environment. However, contrary to earlier results, we found that positive images were rated as more familiar than negative images. This pattern was found with both identified and unidentified images and was replicated across five experiments. The current findings are consistent with the view that feelings of positivity and familiarity are closely linked (e.g., de Vries et al., 2010, Psychological Science, 21[3], 321-328; Garcia-Marques et al., 2004, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 585-593; Monin, 2003, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85[6], 1035-1048).

Epistemic Feelings are Affective Experiences

This paper develops the claim that epistemic feelings are affective experiences. To establish some diagnostic criteria, characteristic features of affective experiences are outlined: valence and arousal. Then, in order to pave the way for showing that epistemic feelings have said features, an initial challenge coming from introspection is addressed. Next, the paper turns to empirical findings showing that we can observe physiological and behavioural proxies for valence and arousal in epistemic tasks that typically rely on epistemic feelings. Finally, it is argued that the affective properties do not only correlate with epistemic feelings but that we, in fact, capitalise on these affective properties to perform the epistemic tasks. In other words: the affective properties in question constitute epistemic feelings.

Valuing what happens: a biogenic approach to valence and (potentially) affect

Valence is half of the pair of properties that constitute core affect, the foundation of emotion. But what is valence, and where is it found in the natural world? Currently, this question cannot be answered. The idea that emotion is the body's way of driving the organism to secure its survival, thriving and reproduction runs like a leitmotif from the pathfinding work of Antonio Damasio through four book-length neuroscientific accounts of emotion recently published by the field's leading practitioners. Yet while Damasio concluded 20 years ago that the homeostasis-affect linkage is rooted in unicellular life, no agreement exists about whether even non-human animals with brains experience emotions. Simple neural animals-those less brainy than bees, fruit flies and other charismatic invertebrates-are not even on the radar of contemporary affective research, to say nothing of aneural organisms. This near-sightedness has effectively denied the most productive method available for getting a grip on highly complex biological processes to a scientific domain whose importance for understanding biological decision-making cannot be underestimated. Valence arguably is the fulcrum around which the dance of life revolves. Without the ability to discriminate advantage from harm, life very quickly comes to an end. In this paper, we review the concept of valence, where it came from, the work it does in current leading theories of emotion, and some of the odd features revealed via experiment. We present a biologically grounded framework for investigating valence in any organism and sketch a preliminary pathway to a computational model. This article is part of the theme issue 'Basal cognition: conceptual tools and the view from the single cell'.

Is it all about the feeling? Affective and (meta-)cognitive mechanisms underlying the truth effect

People are more likely to judge repeatedly perceived statements as true. A decisive explanation for this so-called truth effect is that the repeated information can be processed more fluently than new information and that this fluency experience renders the information more familiar and trustworthy. Little is known, however, regarding whether and how affective states and dispositional cognitive preferences influence the truth effect. To this end, we conducted two experiments in which we manipulated (a) processing fluency via repetition, (b) the time interval (10 min vs. 1 week) between repetitions, and (c) short-term affective states using the presentation of emotional faces (Experiment 1) or the presence of an irrelevant source for changes in affective states (Experiment 2). Additionally, we assessed the dispositional variables need for cognitive closure (NCC), preference for deliberation (PD) and preference for intuition (PI). Results of Experiment 1 showed that the truth effect was significantly reduced for statements that were followed by a negative prime, although this was the case only for the longer repetition lag. Furthermore, higher NCC and lower PD scores were associated with an increased truth effect. Results of Experiment 2 replicated the moderating role of NCC and further showed that participants, who were provided with an alternative source for changes in their affective states, showed a reduced truth effect. Together, the findings suggest that (a) fluency-related changes in affective states may be (co-)responsible for the truth effect, (b) the truth effect is decreased when the repetition interval is long rather than short, and (c) the truth effect is increased for individuals with a higher need for cognitive closure. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Contextual positivity-familiarity effects are unaffected by known moderators of misattribution

ABSTRACTThe positivity-familiarity effect refers to the phenomenon that positive affect increases the likelihood that people judge a stimulus as familiar. Drawing on the assumption that positivity-familiarity effects result from a common misattribution mechanism that is shared with conceptually similar effects (e.g. fluency-familiarity effects), we investigated whether positivity-familiarity effects are qualified by three known moderators of other misattribution phenomena: (a) conceptual similarity between affect-eliciting prime stimuli and focal target stimuli, (b) relative salience of affect-eliciting prime stimuli, and (c) explicit warnings about the effects of affect-eliciting prime stimuli on familiarity judgments of the targets. Counter to predictions, three experiments obtained robust positivity-familiarity effects that were unaffected by the hypothesised moderators. The findings pose a challenge for misattribution accounts of positivity-familiarity effects, but they are consistent with alternative accounts in terms of affective monitoring.

Social Inferences From Faces as a Function of the Left-to-Right Movement Continuum

We examined whether reading and writing habits known to drive agency perception also shape the attribution of other agency-related traits, particularly for faces oriented congruently with script direction (i.e., left-to-right). Participants rated front-oriented, left-oriented and right-oriented faces on 14 dimensions. These ratings were first reduced to two dimensions, which were further confirmed with a new sample: power and social-warmth. Both dimensions were systematically affected by head orientation. Right-oriented faces generated a stronger endorsement of the power dimension (e.g., agency, dominance), and, to a lesser extent, of the social-warmth dimension, relative to the left and frontal-oriented faces. A further interaction between the head orientation of the faces and their gender revealed that front-facing females, relative to front-facing males, were attributed higher social-warmth scores, or communal traits (e.g., valence, warmth). These results carry implications for the representation of people in space particularly in marketing and political contexts. Face stimuli and respective norming data are available at www.osf.io/v5jpd.

Judging Truth

Deceptive claims surround us, embedded in fake news, advertisements, political propaganda, and rumors. How do people know what to believe? Truth judgments reflect inferences drawn from three types of information: base rates, feelings, and consistency with information retrieved from memory. First, people exhibit a bias to accept incoming information, because most claims in our environments are true. Second, people interpret feelings, like ease of processing, as evidence of truth. And third, people can (but do not always) consider whether assertions match facts and source information stored in memory. This three-part framework predicts specific illusions (e.g., truthiness, illusory truth), offers ways to correct stubborn misconceptions, and suggests the importance of converging cues in a post-truth world, where falsehoods travel further and faster than the truth.

The influence of articulation dynamics on recognition memory

Previous research has demonstrated an effect of consonantal direction on preference, showing that words following inward articulation dynamics (e.g., EMOK or OPIK) are generally liked more than words following outward dynamics (e.g., EKOM or OKIP). The present studies extended this line of research by hypothesizing an effect of consonantal direction on recognition memory, specifically familiarity. In a total of 7 experimental studies (N = 1043), we tested and confirmed this hypothesis, consistently finding increased hits and false alarms for inward compared to outward pseudo-words. This difference was found to be based on a higher perceived familiarity for inward compared to outward pseudo-words. Alternative explanations of an affirmation tendency or a recollection advantage were ruled out in Experiments 4 and 5. Experiments 6a and 6b examined the role of articulation fluency and liking as potential mediators of the effect, but found that neither mediated the influence of consonantal direction on familiarity. Thus, the in-out familiarity effect documented here seems to be a phenomenon that is distinct from the previously described in-out preference effect.

Off the top of my head: Malleability and stability in natural categories

Previous research has found that category representations are highly malleable knowledge structures, varying widely across different contexts and individuals. However, it has also been found that such malleability does not apply equally to all types of category information. The present research further investigates the representational malleability versus stability of natural taxonomic categories. Using perceptual fluency as means to induce malleability, we explored whether malleability is moderated by the degree of typicality of category information. In the first experiment, we found that fluency-based malleability only occurs for non-typical category information. In follow-up experiments, we investigated the boundary conditions under which such fluency-based malleability occurs. Namely, in Experiment 2, we showed that the effect of fluency on non-typical features disappeared when there is a sensory modality mismatch between study and test phases. Finally, in Experiment 3, we demonstrated that this effect reappears in the modality mismatch condition when participants are given a response deadline. The implications of these findings to current theories of category representation and the perceptual fluency literature are discussed.

At the Boundaries of Misattribution

Priming effects in the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) have been explained by a misattribution of prime-related affect to neutral targets. However, the measure has been criticized for being susceptible to intentional use of prime-features in judgments of the targets. To isolate the contribution of unintentional processes, the present research expanded on the finding that positive affect can be misattributed to familiarity (i.e., positivity-familiarity effect). To the extent that prime-valence is deemed irrelevant for judgments of target-familiarity, positivity-familiarity effects in the AMP could potentially rule out intentional use of the primes. Seven experiments collectively suggest that prime-valence influences judgments of target-familiarity in the AMP, but only when the task context does not suggest a normatively accurate response to the familiarity-judgment task. Relations of positivity-familiarity effects to self-reported use of prime-valence revealed mixed results regarding the role of intentional processes. Implications for the AMP and misattribution effects are discussed.

A role for visceral feedback and interoception in feelings-of-knowing

Guided by the framework that autonomic feedback shapes emotional experience and other feeling states, we asked whether feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments may be influenced by visceral information through interoception. Participants performed a FOK task for previously studied face-name pairs while changes in cardiovascular and facial muscle activity were recorded. Previously studied face cues for which the corresponding name could not be recalled elicited an increased cardiac rate relative to novel face cues. Critically, the relationship between this pattern of cardiovascular activity and FOK ratings was moderated by interoception, such that for individuals with high interoceptive sensitivity, relative increases in cardiac rate for old items were associated with larger corresponding differences in FOK. Consistent with a link between familiarity and positive affect, we also found that old items elicited less frowning, as reflected in muscle activity recorded from the corrugator muscle. These results provide psychophysiological evidence that visceral signals contribute to experiential metamemory processes.

The future is now: the impact of present fluency in judgments about the future

Recent research has emphasised the role of episodic memory in both remembering past events and in envisaging future events. On the other hand, it has been repeatedly shown that judgments about past events are affected by the fluency with which retrieval cues are processed. In this paper we investigate whether perceptual fluency also plays a role in judgments about future events. For this purpose we conducted four experiments. The first experiment replicated recent findings showing that stimuli that are processed fluently tend to be wrongly recognised as having been encountered in the past outside the laboratory walls [Brown, A. S., & Marsh, E. J. (2009). Creating illusions of past encounter through brief exposure. Psychological Science, 20, 534-538. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337.x ]. Two follow-up experiments using Brown and Marsh's [(2009). Creating illusions of past encounter through brief exposure. Psychological Science, 20, 534-538. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02337 ] task tested the influence of perceptual fluency on future judgments. The fourth and last experiment was designed to rule out a potential confounding factor in the two previous experiments. Across experiments, we found that people rely on fluency when making judgments about events that are yet to come. These results suggest that fluency is an equally valid cue for past and future judgments.

Are You Smiling, or Have I Seen You Before? Familiarity Makes Faces Look Happier

It is clear that unreinforced repetition (familiarization) influences affective responses to social stimuli, but its effects on the perception of facial emotion are unknown. Reporting the results of two experiments, we show for the first time that repeated exposure enhances the perceived happiness of facial expressions. In Experiment 1, using a paradigm in which subjects' responses were orthogonal to happiness in order to avoid response biases, we found that faces of individuals who had previously been shown were deemed happier than novel faces. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect with a rapid "happy or angry" categorization task. Using psychometric function fitting, we found that for subjects to classify a face as happy, they needed less actual happiness to be present in the face if the target was familiar than if it was novel. Critically, our results suggest that familiar faces appear happier than novel faces because familiarity selectively enhances the impact of positive stimulus features.

Normative Emotional Responses to Behavior Analysis Jargon or How Not to Use Words to Win Friends and Influence People

It has been suggested that non-experts regard the jargon of behavior analysis as abrasive, harsh, and unpleasant. If this is true, excessive reliance on jargon could interfere with the dissemination of effective services. To address this often discussed but rarely studied issue, we consulted a large, public domain list of English words that have been rated by members of the general public for the emotional reactions they evoke. Selected words that behavior analysts use as technical terms were compared to selected words that are commonly used to discuss general science, general clinical work, and behavioral assessment. There was a tendency for behavior analysis terms to register as more unpleasant than other kinds of professional terms and also as more unpleasant than English words generally. We suggest possible reasons for this finding, discuss its relevance to the challenge of deciding how to communicate with consumers who do not yet understand or value behavior analysis, and advocate for systematic research to guide the marketing of behavior analysis.

On the Social Validity of Behavior-Analytic Communication: a Call for Research and Description of One Method

It has often been suggested that nonexperts find the communication of behavior analysts to be viscerally off-putting. We argue that this concern should be the focus of systematic research rather than mere discussion, and describe five studies that illustrate how publicly available lists of word-emotion ratings can be used to estimate the responses of general-audience listeners. Our results provide support for the hypothesis that some of the ways in which behavior analysts tend to discuss their discipline can be unpleasant, but also illustrate inter- and intraindividual variations in pleasantness. Although our methods are atypical for behavior-analytic research, they are appropriate to the topic and sufficient to suggest many directions for additional research through which a field that considers itself sophisticated in matters of verbal behavior might shed light on its own disciplinary communication challenges.

Interactions between Identity and Emotional Expression in Face Processing across the Lifespan: Evidence from Redundancy Gains

We tested how aging affects the integration of visual information from faces. Three groups of participants aged 20–30, 40–50, and 60–70 performed a divided attention task in which they had to detect the presence of a target facial identity or a target facial expression. Three target stimuli were used: (1) with the target identity but not the target expression, (2) with the target expression but not the target identity, and (3) with both the target identity and target expression (the redundant target condition). On nontarget trials the faces contained neither the target identity nor expression. All groups were faster in responding to a face containing both the target identity and emotion compared to faces containing either single target. Furthermore the redundancy gains for combined targets exceeded performance limits predicted by the independent processing of facial identity and emotion. These results are held across the age range. The results suggest that there is interactive processing of facial identity and emotion which is independent of the effects of cognitive aging. Older participants demonstrated reliably larger size of the redundancy gains compared to the young group that reflect a greater experience with faces. Alternative explanations are discussed.

Parallel effects of processing fluency and positive affect on familiarity-based recognition decisions for faces

According to attribution models of familiarity assessment, people can use a heuristic in recognition-memory decisions, in which they attribute the subjective ease of processing of a memory probe to a prior encounter with the stimulus in question. Research in social cognition suggests that experienced positive affect may be the proximal cue that signals fluency in various experimental contexts. In the present study, we compared the effects of positive affect and fluency on recognition-memory judgments for faces with neutral emotional expression. We predicted that if positive affect is indeed the critical cue that signals processing fluency at retrieval, then its manipulation should produce effects that closely mirror those produced by manipulations of processing fluency. In two experiments, we employed a masked-priming procedure in combination with a Remember-Know (RK) paradigm that aimed to separate familiarity- from recollection-based memory decisions. In addition, participants performed a prime-discrimination task that allowed us to take inter-individual differences in prime awareness into account. We found highly similar effects of our priming manipulations of processing fluency and of positive affect. In both cases, the critical effect was specific to familiarity-based recognition responses. Moreover, in both experiments it was reflected in a shift toward a more liberal response bias, rather than in changed discrimination. Finally, in both experiments, the effect was found to be related to prime awareness; it was present only in participants who reported a lack of such awareness on the prime-discrimination task. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that points not only to a role of fluency, but also of positive affect in familiarity assessment. As such they are consistent with the idea that fluency itself may be hedonically marked.

Hypochondriacal attitudes comprise heterogeneous non-illness-related cognitions

BACKGROUND

Hypochondriacal attitudes were associated with cognitions not related to illness: Social fears, low self-esteem, and reduced warm glow effect, i.e. less positive appraisal of familiar stimuli. Only a single study had investigated the correlation of hypochondriacal attitudes with the warm glow effect so far and the present study aimed to corroborate this association. Particularly, the present investigation tested for the first time whether social fears, low self-esteem, and reduced warm glow effect represent distinct or related biases in hypochondriacal attitudes.

METHODS

Fifty-five volunteers filled in the Hypochondriacal Beliefs and Disease Phobia scales of the Illness Attitude Scales, two scales enquiring social fears of criticism and intimacy, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The interaction of valence and spontaneous familiarity ratings of Chinese characters indicated the warm glow effect.

RESULTS

A stepwise regression model revealed specific covariance of social fears and warm glow with hypochondriacal attitudes independent from the respective other variable. The correlation between low self-esteem and hypochondriacal attitudes missed significance.

CONCLUSIONS

Hypochondriacal attitudes are embedded in a heterogeneous cluster of non-illness-related cognitions. Each social fears and a reduced cognitive capacity to associate two features--positive appraisal and familiarity--could diminish the susceptibility to safety signals such as medical reassurance. To compensate for reduced susceptibility to safety signals, multifocal treatment and repeated consultations appear advisable.

Hypochondriacal attitudes may reflect a general cognitive bias that is not limited to illness-related thoughts

Previous findings suggested that hypochondriacal attitudes could originate from a pessimistic trait independent of illness-related thoughts. We hypothesised that hypochondriacal attitudes correlated with a general cognitive tendency towards negative interpretations and reduced familiarisation. Healthy non-patients were invited to participate. The sum score from the Hypochondriacal Beliefs and Disease Phobia scales of the Illness Attitude Scales assessed hypochondriacal attitudes. Participants without any knowledge of the Chinese language were asked to guess whether or not each of eight Chinese characters had a positive meaning and whether the characters appeared familiar. Stimuli without semantic content avoided a reference to illness in order to assess a general cognitive bias. Participants with high hypochondriasis scores rated apparently familiar stimuli as being less positive in comparison to low hypochondriacal participants, F(1,78) = 9.2, p = 0.003, η² = 0.10; correlation of hypochondriasis scores to the differences between ratings of familiar and unfamiliar characters: ρ = 0.345, p = 0.002. Positivity and familiarity ratings did not correlate with hypochondriacal attitudes independent of each other. A less positive appraisal of familiar experiences, which is unrelated to illness-related thoughts, may maintain hypochondriacal concerns. A general distrustful attitude towards familiar procedures should be considered in hypochondriasis.

Voodoo Correlations Are Everywhere—Not Only in Neuroscience

A recent set of articles in Perspectives on Psychological Science discussed inflated correlations between brain measures and behavioral criteria when measurement points (voxels) are deliberately selected to maximize criterion correlations (the target article was Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler, 2009). However, closer inspection reveals that this problem is only a special symptom of a broader methodological problem that characterizes all paradigmatic research, not just neuroscience. Researchers not only select voxels to inflate effect size, they also select stimuli, task settings, favorable boundary conditions, dependent variables and independent variables, treatment levels, moderators, mediators, and multiple parameter settings in such a way that empirical phenomena become maximally visible and stable. In general, paradigms can be understood as conventional setups for producing idealized, inflated effects. Although the feasibility of representative designs is restricted, a viable remedy lies in a reorientation of paradigmatic research from the visibility of strong effect sizes to genuine validity and scientific scrutiny.

The Mere Exposure Phenomenon: A Lingering Melody by Robert Zajonc

The mere exposure phenomenon (repeated exposure to a stimulus is sufficient to improve attitudes toward that stimulus) is one of the most inspiring phenomena associated with Robert Zajonc’s long and productive career in social psychology. In the first part of this article, Richard Moreland (who was trained by Zajonc in graduate school) describes his own work on exposure and learning, and on the relationships among familiarity, similarity, and attraction in person perception. In the second part, Sascha Topolinski (a recent graduate who never met Zajonc, but found his ideas inspirational) describes his own work concerning embodiment and fluency in the mere exposure effect. Also, several avenues for future research on the mere exposure phenomenon are identified, further demonstrating its continuing relevance to the field.

The Truth About the Truth: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Truth Effect

Repetition has been shown to increase subjective truth ratings of trivia statements. This truth effect can be measured in two ways: (a) as the increase in subjective truth from the first to the second encounter ( within-items criterion) and (b) as the difference in truth ratings between repeated and other new statements ( between-items criterion). Qualitative differences are assumed between the processes underlying both criteria. A meta-analysis of the truth effect was conducted that compared the two criteria. In all, 51 studies of the repetition-induced truth effect were included in the analysis. Results indicate that the between-items effect is larger than the within-items effect. Moderator analyses reveal that several moderators affect both effects differentially. This lends support to the notion that different psychological comparison processes may underlie the two effects. The results are discussed within the processing fluency account of the truth effect.

On Framing Effects in Decision Making: Linking Lateral versus Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex Activation to Choice Outcome Processing

Two correlates of outcome processing in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) have been proposed in the literature: One hypothesis suggests that the lateral/medial division relates to representation of outcome valence (negative vs. positive), and the other suggests that the medial OFC maintains steady stimulus-outcome associations, whereas the lateral OFC represents changing (unsteady) outcomes to prepare for response shifts. These two hypotheses were contrasted by comparing the original with the inverted version of the Iowa Gambling Task in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. Results showed (1) that (caudo) lateral OFC was indeed sensitive to the steadiness of the outcomes and not merely to outcome valence and (2) that the original and the inverted tasks, although both designed to measure sensitivity for future outcomes, were not equivalent as they enacted different behaviors and brain activation patterns. Results are interpreted in terms of Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory suggesting that cognitions and decisions are biased differentially when probabilistic future rewards are weighed against consistent punishments relative to the opposite scenario [Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39, 341–350, 1984]. Specialized processing of unsteady rewards (involving caudolateral OFC) may have developed during evolution in support of goal-related thinking, prospective planning, and problem solving.

Affective modulation of recognition bias

A correspondence of processing on the familiarity-novelty and positive-negative dimensions, particularly in the earliest processing stages, is proposed. Familiarity manipulations should, therefore, not only influence affective evaluations (e.g., the mere exposure effect), but affective manipulations should also bias familiarity judgments (e.g., in recognition). In Experiment 1, both previously presented and new recognition test words were primed by matching, nonmatching, positive, or negative context words. In Experiment 2, more diffuse affective states were induced during recognition test trials by contracting facial muscles that corresponded to positive and negative expressions. Particularly when participants were less aware of the familiarity and affective manipulations, corresponding effects were found. Positive affect led to a more liberal recognition bias, and negative affect led to more cautious tendencies.