Abstract
The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with “up” responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required.
Highlights
According to dimensional models of emotion, valence describes the extent to which a stimulus is positive or negative whereas emotional arousal refers to its degree of physiological activation, i.e., how calming or exciting/agitating a stimulus is (Russell, 1980, 2003; Reisenzein, 1994; Lang et al, 1997)
The present study investigated reaction times and response type to high- vs. low-arousal positive and negative words in order to test the hypothesis that emotional valence and emotional arousal can affect explicit and implicit approach vs. withdrawal tendencies
In line with the idea proposed by Robinson et al (2004) that stimulus valence and stimulus arousal can elicit conflict in processing if the two dimensions do not match, we found slower reaction times in response to PH and NL compared to PL and NH words
Summary
According to dimensional models of emotion, valence describes the extent to which a stimulus is positive or negative whereas emotional arousal refers to its degree of physiological activation, i.e., how calming or exciting/agitating a stimulus is (Russell, 1980, 2003; Reisenzein, 1994; Lang et al, 1997). When stimuli are mapped in affective space according to their subjective ratings, emotional valence and arousal ratings typically show a quadratic relationship, whereby highly positive or negative stimuli are rated higher in their level of arousal; negative stimuli tend to be rated higher in arousal than positive stimuli (Bradley and Lang, 1999; Lang et al, 1999; Võ et al, 2009; Montefinese et al, 2013; Citron et al, 2014b) Despite this relationship, the two dimensions of valence and arousal are considered distinct affective dimensions; they are associated with different physiological and affective behavioral responses (Lang et al, 1990, 1993), activate partially-dissociable brain networks (Small et al, 2003; Lewis et al, 2007; Wilson-Mendenhall et al, 2013) and are correlated with different lexico-semantic properties such as familiarity, imageability, and concreteness (Kousta et al, 2011; Montefinese et al, 2013; Citron et al, 2014b; Schmidtke et al, 2014). In line with this dimensional view, empirical research has shown that a wide range of emotional stimuli including pictures, faces, words (denoting emotions, personality traits, or other concepts), and even short scenarios describing specific emotions, can be successfully mapped onto this two-dimensional affective space and distinguished by their position within that space (Abelson and Sermant, 1962; Russell, 1980; Cacioppo and Berntson, 1994; Barrett and Russell, 1999; Lang et al, 1999; Wilson-Mendenhall et al, 2013)
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