Do Approach-Avoidance Actions Create Attitudes?

Abstract

Do approach-avoidance actions create attitudes? Prior influential studies suggested that rudimentary attitudes could be established by simply pairing novel stimuli (Chinese ideographs) with arm flexion (approach) or arm extension (avoidance). In three experiments, we found that approach-avoidance actions alone were insufficient to account for such effects. Instead, we found that these affective influences resulted from the interaction of these actions with a priori differences in stimulus valence. Thus, with negative stimuli, the effect of extension on attitude was more positive than the effect of flexion. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the affect from motivationally compatible or incompatible action can also influence task evaluations. A final experiment, using Chinese ideographs from the original studies, confirmed these findings. Both approach and avoidance actions led to more positive evaluations of the ideographs when the actions were motivationally compatible with the prior valence of the ideographs. The attitudinal impact of approach-avoidance action thus reflects its situated meaning, which depends on the valence of stimuli being approached or avoided.