Incidental Affect Research Articles

Moving beyond categorization to understand affective influences on real world health decisions.

This paper provides an overview of affect and health decision-making research, with a focus on identifying gaps, opportunities, and challenges to guide future research. We begin by defining common categorical distinctions of affective processes that influence health decisions: integral (i.e., related to the decision) and incidental (i.e., normatively unrelated to the decision) influences, and current (experienced in the moment) and anticipated ("cognitive representations" of future affect) affect. We then summarize key discoveries within the most common categories of affective influences on health decision making: current integral affect, current incidental affect, and anticipated integral affect. Finally, we highlight research gaps, challenges, and opportunities for future directions for research aimed at translating affective and decision science theory to improve our understanding of, and ability to intervene upon, health decision making.

You are what I feel: A test of the affective realism hypothesis.

We present evidence for the affective realism hypothesis, that incidental affect is a key ingredient in an individual's experience of the world. In three studies, we used an interocular suppression technique (continuous flash suppression [CFS]) to present smiling, scowling, or neutral faces suppressed from conscious visual awareness while consciously perceived neutral faces were presented at three different timing intervals: 150 ms before, 150 ms after, and concurrent with the suppressed affective faces (Studies 1 and 3) or at timing intervals of 100 ms (Study 2). Results for all three studies revealed that consciously perceived neutral faces were experienced significantly more positively (e.g., as more trustworthy) when concurrently paired with suppressed smiling faces than when concurrently paired with suppressed scowling faces; there was no effect of suppressed affective faces on first impressions in the other timing conditions. This pattern of results is consistent with the affective realism hypothesis but inconsistent with both affective misattribution and affective priming interpretations. Incidental affect must be meaningfully contiguous in time with the target stimulus to be experienced as a property of the target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Does integral affect influence intentions to use artificial intelligence for skin cancer screening? A test of the affect heuristic

Objective: This study investigated how affect influences people’s processing of messages about risks and benefits of using autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) technology to screen for skin cancer. We examined integral affect (emotion derived during decision making) separately from incidental affect (extraneous mood states).Design: Using the affect heuristic framework, we randomly assigned 273 participants to conditions featuring risk (high, low, uncertain) or benefit (high, low, uncertain) messages about AI. Following ‘affect-as-spotlight’, we also explored whether people’s integral affect towards skin cancer moderated the relationship between risk/benefit messages and AI screening intentions.Outcomes: Perceived risk, perceived benefit, positive and negative affect toward AI, intention to use AI screening.Results: After controlling for incidental affect and risk perceptions, we found that compared to low risk messages, uncertain risk messages increased participants’ negative affect toward AI, decreased positive affect toward AI, increased AI risk evaluations and reduced AI benefit evaluations. Perceptual variables significantly mediated participants’ intentions to use AI for risk messages but not benefit messages. No moderation effects were found.Conclusions: Results suggest extending the affect heuristic framework to include uncertain risk conditions. Integral AI affect influenced people’s interpretation of messages, which then impacted likelihood to use AI technology for health.

Anxiety increases visual attention to hedonic foods: A preliminary eye-tracking study on the impact of the interplay between integral and incidental affect on foods

Two types of affect influence consumers' attention: incidental affect unrelated to a particular perception or judgment and integral affect directly related to the particular options under consideration. Although integral and incidental affect likely coexist on a regular basis, the claim that both concurrently guide consumers' attention has thus far received little attention. To fill this gap, the present study investigated the effects of the interplay of integral and incidental affect on the visual processing of food. Food labels play an essential role in attracting consumer attention. Food labels include sources of integral affect (e.g., food type, pictures), and consumers often view food labels under the influence of incidental affect (e.g., an unrelated anxiety-inducing message or personal experience). According to the appraisal tendency framework, incidental experiences of anxiety can enhance affective processing of food due to the uncertainty associated with anxiety. In our study, participants were first subjected to manipulation of an incidental emotion (anxiety, anger, or neutral). Then, they passively viewed food labels, including pictures and nutrient labels, for hedonic and healthy foods. Subject's eye movements were tracked during this stage of the study. Our results showed that the induction of incidental anxiety, but not anger or neutral feelings, led to greater visual attention on hedonic foods only. These findings shed light on the interplay between incidental and integral affect in consumer information processing, demonstrating that the co-occurrence of incidental anxiety and integral hedonic feelings enhance visual attention to food.

The feeling of throwing good money after bad: The role of affective reaction in the sunk-cost fallacy.

Continuing investing in a failing plan (i.e., the sunk-cost fallacy) is a common error that people are inclined to make when making decisions. It is impossible to get resources back that already have been invested. Hence, economic theory implies that decision makers’ decisions should only be guided by future gains and losses. According to the literature, the sunk-cost fallacy is driven by negative affect. Previous studies focused on negative incidental affect. We investigated, in contrast, whether the sunk-cost fallacy is caused by integral affect elicited by the specific decision context. Study 1 demonstrated a positive relationship between affective reaction and the sunk-cost fallacy. Study 2 replicated the finding in Study 1 in a within-subjects design, and demonstrated a full mediation of type of scenario (invest vs. non-invest) on the sunk-cost effect, mediated by integral affective reaction. A mediation using a within-subjects design additionally demonstrated that the effect is mediated by integral emotional responses experienced in relation to each scenario, and not by incidental emotional states that are unrelated to the scenarios. Study 3 replicated findings in the previous studies, and demonstrated that the relation between the sunk-cost fallacy and affect is moderated by justification. Participants who justified their decision were more resistant to the sunk-cost fallacy, and showed less negative affect elicited by the scenarios, than participants who did not justify their decision. Study 4 provided supporting evidence for our hypothesis by hindering conscious deliberation, and promoting reliance on affect, via cognitive load. The results showed that the relation between affect and the sunk-cost fallacy was stronger for participants under high cognitive load, than under low-load. The paper discussed how this research leads to new ways to protect against the sunk-cost fallacy in the discussion.

The influence of incidental affect and mood-changing price on online booking intention

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the joint influence of incidental affect and mood-changing prices on consumers’ hotel booking intention in an online purchase context.Design/methodology/approachBased on the integrative framework of affect evaluation and affect regulation, a 3 × 2 full factorial between-subject online experiment in an online booking scenario is developed to investigate how consumers’ booking intentions change by mood inductions (happy, neutral and sad) and price levels (below versus above reference price).FindingsResults showed that when the observed price was a mood-threatening cue, participants who were induced to feel either happy or sad by a commercial had a higher booking intention than those who were induced to feel neutral. However, there were no significant differences in participants’ booking intentions across pre-purchase affective states when the observed price was a mood-lifting cue.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study contributes to a better understanding and prediction of consumers’ action tendencies resulting from the interactions between specific incidental affects and mood-changing opportunities in an online hotel reservation environment.Practical implicationsOnline booking companies and online travel agencies in general may wish to incorporate mood-changing components into their booking web pages to enhance potential bookers’ purchase intentions at any given price.Originality/valueThis research is one of the first empirical studies to instantiate the integrative affective mechanism in an online purchase setting. As e-commerce and online marketplaces are taking the place of traditional brick-and-mortar retailing, it is critical for hospitality industry marketers to fully understand how consumers’ pre-purchase emotions influence their purchase decisions.

Incidental mood state before dissonance induction affects attitude change.

The way that incidental affect impacts attitude change brought about by controlled processes has so far been examined when the incidental affective state is generated after dissonance state induction. We therefore investigated attitude change when the incidental mood occurs prior to dissonance state induction. We expected a negative mood to induce systematic processing, and a positive mood to induce heuristic processing. Given that both systematic processing and attitude change are cognitively costly, we expected participants who experienced the dissonance state in a negative mood to have insufficient resources to allocate to attitude change. In our experiment, after mood induction (negative, neutral or positive), participants were divided into low-dissonance and high-dissonance groups. They then wrote a counterattitudinal essay. Analysis of their attitudes towards the essay topic indicated that attitude change did not occur in the negative incidental mood condition. Moreover, written productivity–one indicator of cognitive resource allocation–varied according to the type of incidental mood, and only predicted attitude change in the high-dissonance group. Our results suggest that incidental mood before dissonance induction influences the style of information processing and, by so doing, affects the extent of attitude change.

Reciprocal within-day associations between incidental affect and exercise: An EMA study

Previous research suggests that how people feel throughout the course of a day (i.e. incidental affect) is predictive of exercise behaviour. A mostly separate literature suggests that exercise can lead to more positive incidental affect.Objective: This study examines the potential reciprocal effects of incidental affect and exercise behaviour within the same day.Design: Fifty-nine low-active (exercise <60 min/week), overweight (BMI: 25.0–39.9) adults (ages 18–65) participated in a six-month print-based exercise promotion programme.Main outcome measures: Ecological momentary assessment was used to record self-reported exercise sessions in real time and incidental affective valence (feeling good/bad) as assessed by the 11-point Feeling Scale at random times throughout the day.Results: Use of a within-subjects cross-lagged, autoregressive model showed that participants were more likely to exercise on days when they experienced more positive incidental affect earlier in the day (b = .58, SE = .10, p < .01), and participants were more likely to experience more positive incidental affect on days when they had exercised (b = .26, SE = .03, p < .01), with the former association significantly stronger than the latter (t = 23.54, p < .01).Conclusion: The findings suggest a positive feedback loop whereby feeling good and exercising are reciprocally influential within the course of a day.

Is adhering to justice rules enough? The role of charismatic qualities in perceptions of supervisors’ overall fairness

Our study challenges the consensus that perceptions of overall fairness are driven solely by adherence to justice rules—that “what seems fair” depends solely on “what seems just.” Building on emerging theorizing on incidental affect and fairness appraisals, we argue that charismatic qualities of supervisors can predict employee perceptions of overall fairness, even when controlling for supervisors’ justice rule adherence. We develop theory for how and when charismatic qualities could exert such effects by drawing on existing models of affect and by introducing a new construct—event frequency—that captures how frequently supervisors make resource allocation decisions. The results of a field study suggest that supervisor charismatic qualities predict overall fairness by arousing positive affect that colors fairness perceptions. The effects of charismatic qualities become stronger as decision events become more frequent, presumably because the information processing associated with those events provides additional opportunities for fairness to be infused with affect.

The Impact of Uncertainty, Threat, and Political Identity on Support for Political Compromise

ABSTRACTThis work examines the impact of uncertainty and threat on support for political compromise. In Study 1, uncertainty, threat, and support for compromise were measured. Uncertainty increased support for compromise only when paired with positive or neutral affect. Studies 2 and 3 used an experimental design to examine the impact of incidental affect on support for political compromise as a function of political identification. Uncertainty was more likely to increase support for compromise in positive or neutral contexts and for political moderates and liberals. The combination of uncertainty and threat led conservatives to express reduced support for compromise.

The Arithmetic of Emotion: Integration of Incidental and Integral Affect in Judgments and Decisions.

Research has demonstrated that two types of affect have an influence on judgment and decision making: incidental affect (affect unrelated to a judgment or decision such as a mood) and integral affect (affect that is part of the perceiver’s internal representation of the option or target under consideration). So far, these two lines of research have seldom crossed so that knowledge concerning their combined effects is largely missing. To fill this gap, the present review highlights differences and similarities between integral and incidental affect. Further, common and unique mechanisms that enable these two types of affect to influence judgment and choices are identified. Finally, some basic principles for affect integration when the two sources co-occur are outlined. These mechanisms are discussed in relation to existing work that has focused on incidental or integral affect but not both.

Affect and Trust in Technology in Teams

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of affective process on trust in technology in teams. Previous research has shown that affect influences trust in technology thus could potentially impact appropriateness of technology use and performance of the team. In this study, 54 participants worked as two-person teams and multi-tasked under varied technology reliability and task difficulty levels. Incidental affect was manipulated by having the participants to view affective images. The results indicated that positive integral affect positively related to trust in technology. Incidental affect influenced trust in technology, however, this effect was moderated by positive integral affect. Positive integral affect also mediated the relationship between technology/task conditions and trust in technology. These findings revealed the role of affect in the mechanism of trust calibration process and have important implications for system design.

Affective Responses on Consumer Behavior: A New Perspective on IMC

The prime objective of this paper is to shed light on incide ntal affect that consumers experience while making a purchase decision, though unknowingly. In psychological litera ture, to be specific, affect in broader sense has received ample attention, with “Schimmack and Crites (2005) l ocating 923 references to affect between 1960 and 1980 and 4,170 between 1980 and 2000” (Cohen, Pham and Andrade, 2006). But, incidental affect has not been treated with due importance. The data in this study ga thered from 60 respondents indicate that incidental affect plays a crucial role in influencing the decision of the consumers and can be further explored as a new avenue of IMC. Researches on subliminal advertisements have been conducted, but that even failed to evoke satisfactory results, evoking suspicion and criticism. In ac tuality, such studies have been conducted in laboratories mainly and results have been found to be toug h to be implemented. Bridging up this gap, the concerned study shows that incidental affect can be cult ivated to bloom as a promising tool of future IMC.

The Influence of Affect on Heuristic Thinking in Insurance Demand

AbstractHeuristic thinking can influence human behavior in decisions under risk and uncertainty. In an experimental setting, we study whether emotional activation primes individuals to use the representativeness heuristic and the affect heuristic. We observe the decision behavior of 272 subjects in a computer‐based experiment that differentiates between incidental affect and integral affect. Positive incidental affect and integral affect increase the use of the representativeness heuristic, while negative incidental affect has no effect. Our findings have statistical and economic significance and carry implications for insurance companies and regulators.

A Dual Processing Analysis of Trust Violations with Implications for Cooperation

We develop a dual-processing model of emotional and behavioral reactions to negative affective events at work, using trust violations as an example. Our model examines the different types of intrapersonal mental processing--automatic (instantaneous) versus controlled (evaluative)--responsible for attributional inferences and propose that these contrasting inferential processes are differentially associated with a variety of emotional and behavioral responses to negative interpersonal affective events. Conceptualizing trust violations as an affective event allows insights into the violated party’s reactions and attends to the three dimensions of violation-related relationship damage--emotional, cognitive and behavioral. Unlike previous models of trust violations, our dual-processing model describes the dynamic interplay between judgments and emotions as well as between automatic and controlled processing. It incorporates incidental, trait, state and pre-existing affect into the formation of attributional i...

The Effects of Country-Related Affect on Product Evaluations

Affect toward countries can be generated by people's personal experiences with the country or by targeted advertising campaigns designed to create positive affect toward the country. In four experiments, this research examines the effect of country-related affect (CRA) on the evaluations of products originating from the country. Country-related affect (CRA) systematically influences product evaluations depending on the valence as well as the warmth or competence associations of CRA. Positive CRA enhances evaluations of products with favorable country-related product (CRP) associations, but it boomerangs and decreases evaluations of products with unfavorable CRP associations. Positive CRA engenders high (vs. low) construal processing that directs consumer attention to CRP associations under low (vs. high) arousal conditions (experiments 1 and 2). Experiments 3 and 4 establish that CRA is a unique type of incidental affect that influences product evaluations based on its warmth or competence associations. The implications for country of origin research are discussed.

Current Emotion Research in Health Behavior Science

In the past two to three decades health behavior scientists have increasingly emphasized affect-related concepts (including, but not limited to emotion) in their attempts to understand and facilitate change in important health behaviors, such as smoking, eating, physical activity, substance abuse, and sex. This article provides a narrative review of this burgeoning literature, including relevant theory and research on affective response (e.g., hedonic response to eating and drug use), incidental affect (e.g., work-related stress as a determinant of alcohol use), affect processing (e.g., anticipated regret for illicit sex or skipping an exercise session), and affectively charged motivation (e.g., cigarette craving). An integrative dual-processing framework is presented that suggests pathways through which affect-related concepts may interrelate to influence health behavior.

The effects of valence‐based and discrete emotional states on aesthetic response

There is increasing recognition that consumer aesthetics--the responses of consumers to the aesthetic or appearance aspects of products--has become an important area of marketing in recent years. Consumer aesthetic responses to a product are a source of pleasure for the consumer. Previous research into the aesthetic responses to products has often emphasized exterior factors and visual design, but studies have seldom considered the psychological aesthetic experience of consumers, and in particular their emotional state. This study attempts to bridge this gap by examining the link between consumers' emotions and their aesthetic response to a product. Thus, the major goal of this study was to determine how valence-based and discrete emotional states influence choice. In Studies 1 and 2, positive and negative emotions were manipulated to implement two different induction techniques and explore the effect of emotions on participants' choices in two separate experiments. The results of both experiments confirmed the predictions, indicating that aesthetic responses and purchase intention are functions of emotional valence, such that both are stronger for people in a positive emotional state than for those in a negative emotional state. Study 2 also used a neutral affective state to establish the robustness of this observed effect of incidental affect. The results of Study 3 demonstrate that aesthetic response and purchase intention are not only a function of affect valence, but also are affected by the certainty appraisal associated with specific affective states. This research, therefore, contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence that incidental affect is a determinant of aesthetic response.

Incidental Affect and Message Processing: Revisiting the Competing Hypotheses

Using six television public service announcements (PSAs) and with a 3 (message topic) × 4 (frame combination) × 2 (messages) mixed design (N = 270), this study explores the impact of incidental affect on message processing in a broader horizon that incorporates operationalization of depth of message processing and how incidental affect is conceptualized and induced. Results showed that (a) there was no significant main effect of incidental affect on message processing in support of the cognitive capacity or affect as information explanations, and (b) there were significant simple main effects of incidental affect on message processing, but such an effect was consistent with the affect as resource explanation, rather than the hedonic contingency model. Implications and direction for future studies were discussed.

Affect as a Decision-Making System of the Present

A variety of empirical findings reviewed in this research support the general thesis that the affective system of judgment and decision making is inherently anchored in the present. Building on this thesis, this research advances the specific hypothesis that affective feelings are relied on more (weighted more heavily) in judgments whose outcomes and targets are closer to the present than in those whose outcomes and targets are temporally more distant. Results from five experiments show that temporal proximity (a) amplifies the relative preference for options that are affectively superior and (b) increases the effects of incidental affect on evaluations. These effects are observed when compared to a more distant future as well as to a more distant past, and (c) they appear to be linked to a greater perceived information value of affective feelings in judgments whose outcomes and targets are closer to the present. Theoretical implications are discussed.