Abstract
Affect is a fundamental aspect of the human mind. An increasing number of experiments attempt to examine the influence of affect on other psychological phenomena. To accomplish this research, it is necessary to experimentally modify participants' affective states. In the present experiment, we compared the efficacy of four commonly used affect induction procedures. Participants (38 healthy undergraduate students: 18 males) were randomly assigned to either a pleasant or an unpleasant affect induction group, and then underwent four different affect induction procedures: (1) recall of an affectively salient event accompanied by affectively congruent music, (2) script-driven guided imagery, (3) viewing images while listening to affectively congruent music, and (4) posing affective facial actions, body postures, and vocal expressions. All four affect induction methods were successful in inducing both pleasant and unpleasant affective states. The viewing image with music and recall with music procedures were most effective in enhancing positive affect, whereas the viewing image with music procedure was most effective in enhancing negative affect. Implications for the scientific study of affect are discussed.
Highlights
Philosophers have believed that every moment of waking life is to some degree pleasant or unpleasant with some degree of arousal, so that affect is a basic ingredient of mental life
BASELINE VALUES The pre-induction valence and arousal ratings for the four induction methods were compared using one way ANOVAs. This indicates that participants of the four induction methods did not differ significantly from each other before the manipulations began. It reveals that neutral induction procedures were effective in bringing the participants back to their baseline affective state after pleasant or unpleasant affect inductions
MANIPULATION CHECK The manipulation checks confirmed that all four affect induction methods were successful in inducing both pleasant and unpleasant affective states
Summary
Philosophers have believed that every moment of waking life is to some degree pleasant or unpleasant with some degree of arousal, so that affect is a basic ingredient of mental life. The term “affect” refers to a neuropsychologically basic state that can be described as hedonic (pleasant or unpleasant) with some degree of arousal (from sleepy to activated; for a review, see Lang et al, 1999; Russell and Barrett, 1999). Consistent with philosophers’ musings, research over the past several decades has illustrated that affect is a central feature in emotion (Diener et al, 1999; Russell, 2003; Barrett, 2006a,b), and exerts influence on many psychological phenomena, including vision (for a review, see Barrett and Bar, 2009), attitudes (e.g., Ito and Cacioppo, 2001), personality (e.g., Revelle, 1995; Yik et al, 2002), stereotyping, and prejudice (e.g., Forgas and Fiedler, 1996),verbal communication and negotiation strategies (e.g., Forgas, 1998, 1999), judgment and decision-making (e.g., Forgas, 1995; Greene and Haidt, 2002), predicting the future (e.g., Gilbert and Ebert, 2002), work motivation (e.g., Seo et al, 2004), psychopathology (e.g., Davidson et al, 2002), health (Gallo et al, 2005), and well-being (e.g., Davidson, 2004). With an aim to find the most effective affect induction procedure, we choose four most commonly used affect induction procedures from the previous literature and directly compare their efficacy to change a person’s self-reported affective state
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
