Positive Affective Reactions Research Articles

Adolescents' responses to the gender valence of cigarette advertising imagery: The role of affect and the self-concept

The studies presented in this manuscript evaluated the role that affect and the self-concept play in adolescent never smokers' reactions to the gender valence of cigarette advertising imagery. Study 1 ( n=29; 59% female) revealed that adolescent females have more positive affective reactions to female-valenced cigarette advertising imagery compared to male-valenced cigarette advertising imagery. Study 2 ( n=101; 56% female) revealed that adolescent females viewed female-valenced cigarette advertising imagery as more relevant to their self-concepts compared to male-valenced cigarette advertising imagery. Across both studies, male adolescents did not respond differently as a function of the gender valence of cigarette advertising imagery. Thus, female-valenced cigarette advertising imagery may have specific effects on never smoking female adolescents by enhancing positive affect and suggesting that women who smoke hold the same characteristics as do the young women themselves.

Adolescents' responses to the gender valence of cigarette advertising imagery: The role of affect and the self-concept

The studies presented in this manuscript evaluated the role that affect and the self-concept play in adolescent never smokers' reactions to the gender valence of cigarette advertising imagery. Study 1 (n=29; 59% female) revealed that adolescent females have more positive affective reactions to female-valenced cigarette advertising imagery compared to male-valenced cigarette advertising imagery. Study 2 (n=101; 56% female) revealed that adolescent females viewed female-valenced cigarette advertising imagery as more relevant to their self-concepts compared to male-valenced cigarette advertising imagery. Across both studies, male adolescents did not respond differently as a function of the gender valence of cigarette advertising imagery. Thus, female-valenced cigarette advertising imagery may have specific effects on never smoking female adolescents by enhancing positive affect and suggesting that women who smoke hold the same characteristics as do the young women themselves.

Child and parent attributions in chronic pediatric conditions: phenylketonuria (PKU) as an exemplar.

Attribution theory, self-regulation, self-handicapping and sick role theories all suggest that children with chronic disease may be held to different standards. This study assesses child and parent attributions in pediatric chronic health conditions and addresses how attributional style may be related to treatment adherence. Four different vignettes were utilized to compare the attributional style of children with phenylketonuria (PKU) and parents of children with PKU to two comparison groups: children with other chronic medical conditions and medically healthy children. In addition, the relationship between metabolic control and attribution ratings was assessed in the PKU sample. Parents of children with medical conditions provided attributions of less child control and more stability as well as more positive affective reactions when compared to parents of healthy children. Children without a medical condition viewed childhood problems as less controllable and more stable. Mothers were more disturbed affectively by behavioral dysregulation and fathers were more disturbed by academic difficulties. In the PKU sample, the higher the phenylalanine level in the child, the more likely the parent and child alike were to attribute childhood problems to external loci of control. Attributional styles appear not to be diagnosis-specific in pediatric populations. Attributional style may be an important variable to consider when targeting treatment adherence.

Inducing affective states with success-failure manipulations: A meta-analysis.

Meta-analytic techniques were used to assess whether successes and failures can be used experimentally to induce affective states. Data from 32 studies, with a total of 2,468 participants, were reviewed. Methods for producing success-failure experiences, as well as the resulting affective reactions, were analyzed. Effect sizes as a result of various methods of induction were calculated. The success-failure manipulation turned out to be capable of reliably inducing both positive and negative affective reactions. A framework for using success-failure manipulations in affect induction is presented. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

Pleasures of the brain

How does the brain cause positive affective reactions to sensory pleasure? An answer to pleasure causation requires knowing not only which brain systems are activated by pleasant stimuli, but also which systems actually cause their positive affective properties. This paper focuses on brain causation of behavioral positive affective reactions to pleasant sensations, such as sweet tastes. Its goal is to understand how brain systems generate ‘liking,’ the core process that underlies sensory pleasure and causes positive affective reactions. Evidence suggests activity in a subcortical network involving portions of the nucleus accumbens shell, ventral pallidum, and brainstem causes ‘liking’ and positive affective reactions to sweet tastes. Lesions of ventral pallidum also impair normal sensory pleasure. Recent findings regarding this subcortical network’s causation of core ‘liking’ reactions help clarify how the essence of a pleasure gloss gets added to mere sensation. The same subcortical ‘liking’ network, via connection to brain systems involved in explicit cognitive representations, may also in turn cause conscious experiences of sensory pleasure.

What is an unconscious emotion?(The case for unconscious "liking")

Ever since William James, psychologists of emotion have tended to view affective states as intrinsically conscious. We argue that nonconscious affect also exists, and focus specifically on the possibility of unconscious "liking". We present evidence that positive and negative affective reactions can be elicited subliminally, while a person is completely unaware of any affective reaction at all (in addition to being unaware of the causal stimulus). Despite the absence of any detectable subjective experience of emotion, subliminally induced unconscious "liking" can influence later consumption behaviour. We suggest that unconscious "liking" is mediated by specific subcortical brain systems, such as the nucleus accumbens and its connections. Ordinarily, conscious liking (feelings of pleasure) results from the interaction of separate brain systems of conscious awareness with those core processes of unconscious affect. But under some conditions, activity in brain systems mediating unconscious core "liking" may become decoupled from conscious awareness. The result is a genuinely unconscious emotion.

The Impact of Affective Reactions on Risky Decision Making in Accounting Contexts

In this study we examine whether managers’ affective reactions influence their risk–taking tendencies in capital budgeting decisions. Prior research on risky decision making indicates that decision makers are often risk averse when choosing among alternatives that yield potential gains, and risk taking when the alternatives yield losses. The results reported here indicate that negative or positive affective reactions can change this commonly found risky behavior. Managers were generally risk avoiding (taking) for gains (losses) in the absence of affective reactions, as predicted by prospect theory. However, when affect was present, they tended to reject investment alternatives that elicited negative affect and accept alternatives that elicited positive affect, resulting in risk taking (avoiding) in gain (loss) contexts. The results also indicate that affective reactions can influence managers to choose alternatives with lower economic value, suggesting that managers consider both financial data and affective reactions when evaluating the utility of a decision alternative. These findings point to the importance of considering affective reactions when attempting to understand and predict risky decision making in accounting contexts.

Unique Effects of Depressive and Anxious Symptomatology on Daily Stress and Coping

Abstract We used a 14-day diary design to evaluate the unique effects of college students' depressive and anxious symptomatology on the occurrence of specific types of daily events, primary and secondary appraisals, use of specific coping strategies, and end-of-day mood. Initial depression was associated with more negative secondary appraisals, less frequent use of social support coping, muted positive affective reactions to low stress ratings and high coping efficacy ratings, and stronger reductions in positive affect in response to emotion expression coping. In contrast, initial anxiety was associated with less frequent reporting of academic stressors and less effective use of problem-focused coping. These findings suggest that depression and anxiety have unique effects on the daily stress and coping process, and they support the construct validity of Clark and Watson's (1991) tripartite model of depression and anxiety.

Theorizing tuberculosis: a reply to Porter and Ogden

Understanding the factors that increase intention to receive COVID-19 vaccines is essential to maximise the vaccination campaign effectiveness. The present experimental study evaluated the effect of exposure to messages targeting cognitive attitude plus anticipated positive (pride) or negative (regret) affective reactions on intention to get vaccinated. Participants included 484 Italian adults randomly allocated to one of four conditions: 1) cognitive attitude message; 2) cognitive attitude plus positive affect message; 3) cognitive attitude plus negative affect message; 4) control condition (no message). Results showed that participants in the second condition reported greater intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19 compared with those in the control condition. Parallel mediation analysis indicated that the effect of the second condition on intention was fully mediated by cognitive attitude and anticipated positive affect. These findings suggest that future campaigns aimed at promoting COVID-19 vaccination intention could usefully target both cognitive attitude and anticipated positive affect.

Communication Set and the Perception of Ongoing Behavior

Four studies demonstrate that communication set can affect the initial perception of ongoing behavior, which, in turn, can affect subsequent reactions to, or judgments based on, that behavior. Participants expecting to transmit information from an observed behavior sequence to another person unitized (i.e., perceptually organized) that sequence into fewer, but not qualitatively different, meaningful actions than did either participants expecting to receive information from another person or participants with no expectation (controls). In addition, transmitters (relative to receivers or controls) attributed traits to an observed actor less confidently (Study 2), recalled fewer actions from the behavior sequence (Study 3), and experienced less positive affective reactions to the sequence (Studies 3 and 4). It appears from these results that, at least in some instances, the objective of transmitters from the outset is to construct a simpler, more easily communicable summary of information, but not one that is fundamentally different in content from receivers or controls.

Antecedents and consequences of real-time affective reactions at work

Based partly on Weiss and Cropanzano's (H. M. Weiss & R. Cropanzano, 1996) Affective Events Theory, hypotheses were stated about likely antecedents and consequences of positive and negative real-time affective reactions at work. Somewhat different antecedents and consequences were predicted for positive as opposed to negative affective reactions. Affective reactions were operationalized as the average of up to 50 reports of momentary positive and negative feelings collected at work over a 2-week period. Structural equation analyses suggest that the data are consistent with the theoretical model proposed. As expected, job characteristics and positive dispositional affectivity predict positive affective reactions, role conflict and negative affectivity predict negative affective reactions, positive affective reactions predict affective commitment and helping behavior, and intention to leave is predicted by attitudes rather than by affective reactions. The results are consistent with Affective Events Theory as well as with 2-domain models that propose different causes and consequences of positive versus negative affect.

いき下感情プライミングにおける脳の神経的応答 Ｅｖｅｎｔ ｒｅｌａｔｅｄ ｆＭＲＩを用いた検討

The affective primacy hypothesis asserts that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input. This phenomenon has been tested using subliminal affective priming technique, however, these techniques are not robust enough and have not been fully explored. The aim of this study was to clarify existence of the affective primacy and the underlying mechanism by a neuroimaging method using event related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Fourteen participants were scanned during a task in which they evaluated presented facial expressions of "anger, " "neutral, " or "happiness." Target stimuli were faces expressing weak and ambiguous anger expressions, which were presented just after a presentation of either (1) faces with strong anger expressions as affective stimuli, neutral faces, or a non-face object; or (2) flash as a control stimuli of 35ms duration. Processing of facial expressions in each condition commonly increased regional blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and left anterior cingulate gyrus. We identified the anterior part of anterior cingulate gyrus showed significant activation in the anger prime condition compared with the other three prime conditions. This suggests that the affective priming effect engendered especially in the anterior cingulate cortex. This suggests that a part of the neurophysiological substrates that underlies the subliminal affective priming has been identified.

The Role of Affect in the Mere Exposure Effect: Evidence from Psychophysiological and Individual Differences Approaches

Affective models of the mere exposure effect propose that repeated exposure to a stimulus increases the positive affect or reduces the negative affect toward the stimulus, whereas recent cognitive models propose that affect is not involved in the mere exposure effect. To test these competing predictions, participants repeatedly viewed photographs of women’s faces and then viewed these women again (familiar) and novel women (unfamiliar) while facial muscle region activity and brain activity were recorded. Familiar stimuli were rated as more likable and they evoked more zygomatic (cheek) muscle region activity than unfamiliar stimuli. Interactions with individual differences occurred. Persons reporting less positive affect and persons reporting more negative affect at baseline evidenced more zygomatic activity to the familiar than to the unfamiliar. Persons with relatively less left frontal cortical activation at baseline evidenced a tendency toward a greater mere exposure effect. These results suggest that repeatedly exposing persons to nonreinforced stimuli increases their positive affective reactions to those stimuli.

The affective component of the secure base schema: Affective priming with representations of attachment security.

Using an affective priming procedure (S. T. Murphy & R. B. Zajonc, 1993), 7 studies examined the effects of the contextual activation of representations of attachment security (secure base schema) on the evaluation of neutral stimuli under either neutral or stressful contexts. In all the studies, participants also reported on their attachment style. Results indicated that the subliminal priming of secure base representations led to more positive affective reactions to neutral stimuli than did the subliminal priming of neutral or no pictures under both neutral and stressful contexts. Although the subliminal priming of positively valued, attachment-unrelated representations heightened positive evaluations under neutral contexts, it failed to elicit positive affect under stressful contexts. The results also revealed interesting effects of attachment style. The discussion focuses on the affective component of the secure base schema.

The role of stressful events in the relationship between positive and negative affects: evidence from field and experimental studies.

Three studies are presented that examine the effects of stress on the relationship between positive and negative affective states. In the first study, recently bereaved and disabled older adults were compared to matched control groups without these recent stressors. Negative affect was inversely correlated with positive affect to a significantly greater extent for the highly stressed groups compared with controls. In a second study, older adults were exposed to a laboratory stressor, and their positive and negative affective reactions recorded. Immediately following a speech stressor task, the inverse correlation between positive and negative affect was significantly greater than in pre- and postassessments of affects. The third study was an attempt to replicate and extend the findings from Study 2 with a mid-aged sample of women. The speech stressor had the same effects as in Study 2. A second stressor, which induced pain through immersion of an arm into cold water, had no effects on the correlation between affective states. Alternative explanations for these effects and the implications for cognitive interventions are discussed.

The advertising effectiveness of different levels of intensity of humour and warmth and the moderating role of top of mind awareness and degree of product use

Responses to three different intensity levels of warmth (none, moderate and high) and three different levels of humour were investigated as well as the moderating role of top of mind awareness and degree of product use. Affective responses, attitude towards the advertisement (Aad) and the brand (Ab) and the favourableness of advertisement-related cognitions were enhanced by the use of warmth although the intensity level (moderate versus high intensity) did not seem to matter. As far as humour was concerned, a high-intensity humorous appeal induced most favourable affective responses, Aad and advertisement-related cognitions, while a moderate level of humour was most conducive for a favourable Ab and brand-related cognitions. Significant interaction effects suggested that the most positive advertisement effects can be obtained by combining high levels of warmth with high levels of humour, while the most positive brand effects can be obtained by combining high levels of warmth and moderate levels of humour. Emotional executions of high intensity led to the most positive affective and cognitive reactions in the case of brands that are not top of mind and to the most positive cognitive reactions in the case where the respondent was a heavy user of the product category. In particular the intensity level of humour led to significant communication effects.

What inhibits the mere-exposure effect: Recollection or familiarity?

The mere-exposure effect is the formation of a positive affective reaction (PAR) to repeated or single exposure to a stimulus, even in the absence of awareness. The mere-exposure effect indicates that communication effects go beyond “explicit memory”, measured with the traditional measures of (aided) recall and recognition. “Implicit memory” indicates latent communication effects, e.g., liking, for persons exposed to particular stimuli. The mere-exposure effect in the absence of awareness represents implicit memory. In this study, the mere-exposure effect is observed by using a new type of divided-attention method with Chinese participants responding to Chinese characters. The prediction by the two-factor model of mere-exposure effect is confirmed. Recognition (“explicit memory”) may inhibit the mere-exposure effect. Recognition memory is a dual process with two aspects: recollection and familiarity. Employing the process dissociation procedure (PDP) (Jacoby, L.L., 1991. Journal of Memory and Language 30, 513–541), it is found that familiarity of above-chance recognition is greater than that of chance recognition. It is the high level of familiarity and not recollection of abovechance recognition that inhibits the mere-exposure effect. The implications of these findings are that a high level of familiarity inhibits the primary affective reaction and “replaces” this reaction with a more conscious and cognitive evaluation. With the two-factor model, with wear-in (habituation) and wear-out (satiation) factors, the optimal level of exposure may be determined in order to increase the affective reaction. The study shows the robustness of the mere-exposure effect, also for familiar stimuli.

Activating Interpersonal Influence Through Provocative Appeals: Evaluation of a Mass Media-Based Antismoking Campaign Targeting Adolescents

In this article, we describe the short-term reactions of the third out of 3 consecutive mass media campaigns in Norway that used provocative emotional appeals to prevent onset of smoking among adolescents. We hypothesized that using provocative appeals would create a discussion among adolescents and that the entire process including interpersonal communication might influence smoking behavior. The mass media campaign consisted of 3 different newspaper advertisements, 1 poster, and 1 television and movie spot. The study population consisted of all adolescents ages 17 and 18 in 1 county in Norway. A questionnaire, focusing on short-term reactions toward the campaign, was mailed to the home addresses of the adolescents in the intervention county (N = 4,994). The response rate was 64.4%. Among the respon- dents, more than half recalled having been exposed to the campaign. For the present mass media campaign, the recall was highest among nonsmoking boys, and overall, boys showed the most positive affective reactions and girls the most negative affective reactions. A higher percentage of girls than boys had dis- cussed the campaign. The highest proportion of positive behavioral reactions was seen in boys. The strongest predictors of positive behavioral outcomes were positive affective reactions and having discussed the campaign with someone, particularly a peer. Both positive and negative affective responses predicted discussion, which in turn influenced positive behavioral outcome. Negative reactions were seen among the smokers in particular.

Use of provocative emotional appeals in a mass media campaign designed to prevent smoking among adolescents

This paper describes short-term reactions to the first of 3 consecutive mass media campaigns designed to explore new approaches to prevent the onset of smoking among adolescents. Based on provocative emotional appeals, the first campaign specifically targeted girls aged 14 and 15 years. We hypothesized that through actively provoking adolescents and thereby creating a discussion among them, a process of interpersonal communication might influence smoking behaviour. The mass media campaign consisted of 3 different newspaper advertisements, 1 poster and 1 TV and cinema spot. The study population consisted of all adolescents aged 14 and 15 years in 1 county in Norway. A questionnaire, measuring short-term reactions to the first campaign, was mailed to the home addresses of the adolescents in the intervention county only (n=5, 051). The response rate was 80%. More than 60% recalled having been exposed to the campaign. The campaign, which targeted smoking girls in particular, obtained more attention and led to more discussion and stronger negative emotional reactions among smoking girls than among any other group. Positive behavioural reactions to the campaign outnumbered negative behavioural reactions. ‘Discussed the campaign with significant others’ turned out to be the strongest predictor of positive behavioural reactions both among smokers and non-smokers. Significant associations between positive affective reactions and positive behavioural reactions were also observed.

Employee affective reactions to organizational quality efforts

Examines two hypotheses: first, that employees’ perceptions of their firm’s quality efforts are related to employee affective reactions (satisfaction, commitment, turnover intentions), with those perceiving greater organizational quality efforts exhibiting more positive affective reactions; and, second, that perceptions of autonomy would account for the relationship between perceptions of organizational quality efforts and employees’ affective reactions. Questionnaires were completed by 228 employees of a large bank. Reports that regression analysis revealed that all of the affective reaction variables were significantly related to perceptions of quality efforts. Further analysis revealed that, while perceptions of autonomy were important with regard to affective reactions, employee perceptions of organizational quality efforts were also directly and significantly related to employees’ affective reactions. The impact of perceptions of quality efforts was found to be most significant for organizational commitment. Discusses the implications of these results.