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Current Research

“Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.” ~Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

If emotions are the great captains of our lives, as Van Gogh suggests, it might be important to ask when such emotional captains are likely to keep us on course rather than onto the rocks. The goal of my research is, therefore, to determine how affect guides cognition and when it enhances or impairs cognitive performance. When affect is experienced as task relevant feedback, it serves to guide styles of learning. Specifically, positive affect promotes a learning style in which incoming information is related to accessible concepts in mind (relational processing), whereas negative affect promotes a learning style in which incoming information is appraised for unique and distinctive features (item-specific processing). I believe that when affective states align with the cognitive task demands, both performance and neural efficiency should be enhanced. These cognition/emotion alignments can then have striking effects for the regulation of perception, judgment, attitude, social processes, and memory .

Sadness Influences Encoding, Reduces False Memories

Can moods govern how we learn and consequently shape our memory? For example, are happy individuals more likely to recall fictitious events than sad individuals? I discovered that sad moods reduce the occurrence of false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory task (Storbeck & Clore, 2005). We presented word lists that were highly associated to a single, non-presented word (the critical lure). Evidence suggests that critical lures come to mind when individuals encode the lists relationally (Brainerd & Reyna, 2003; Roediger et al., 2001). By contrast, item-specific processing is thought to impair relational encoding, thereby reducing false memories (Arndt & Reder, 2003). As mentioned above, positive affective cues promote relational processing, whereas negative affective cues promote item-specific processing (Clore et al., 2001; Clore & Storbeck, 2007). To test these ideas, positive and negative moods were induced before individuals completed the false memory task. We hypothesized and found that negative affect reduced the recall of critical lures, suggesting that happy moods promoted relational processing and sad moods promoted item-specific processing.

The next question was, when does affect influence the activation of the critical lures? Does sadness prevent the highly associated lures from coming to mind during encoding or does it inhibit people from responding with the lure at retrieval? I ran two experiments to address these questions. In both, I induced positive and negative mood states, and had participants complete the false memory task. However, in one of these experiments they were asked to recall not only the presented words, but also any other words that came to mind. Such instructions are effective for determining whether critical lures were activated during encoding (Hege & Dodson, 2004). I discovered that such lures were less likely to come to mind for sad individuals, suggesting that such lures were not activated at encoding for these individuals. In the second experiment, I manipulated the timing of the mood induction (either before or after list learning) and used a recognition task instead of a recall task. The results were clear. Moods influenced the recognition of critical lures when induced before learning, but not when induced after learning. Moreover, using a signal-detection framework designed for assessing biased responding during retrieval, I found that response biases were not responsible for the effects. I concluded that happy moods promote relational processing, which enhanced false memories, whereas sad moods promote item-specific processing, which reduced false memories..

Sadness Influences Encoding, Enhances Spatial Memory

Thus far, my results suggest that sadness promotes item-specific processing as evident in a lack of false memories among individuals in sad moods. Item specific processing, however, should not only decrease false memory effects, but also increase memory for distinctive features of stimuli. If so, then does sadness enhance memory for distinctive features? In recent research, I induced affective states and then presented DRM word lists, as before, but this time the items appeared in different spatial locations. I found that although sadness inhibited false recall, as before, it enhanced accurate recall of spatial locations. By contrast, happiness increased false memories, but not accurate memory for spatial locations. Thus, sadness promoted item-specific processing, whereas happiness promoted relational processing.

Thus, positive moods make good captains when the task requires relational processing, whereas negative moods make good captains when the task requires item-specific processing.

Affect Moderates Cognitive Processing and Neural Efficiency

Can neural processing be enhanced when affective states align with cognitive demands? Specifically, I examined the hypothesis that affective states promote particular styles of cognitive processing by choosing tasks varying in processing demands (verbal vs. spatial working memory). I reasoned that the alignment of task demands and affective states should result in performance benefits and neural efficiencies. I discovered that such alignment reduced prefrontal asymmetries in EEG, indicating efficient processing in the sense that fewer specialized resources were required to successfully complete the task. This research draws on the growing literature suggesting that positive, approach-related emotions produce a left lateralized prefrontal asymmetry (pFA), whereas negative, withdrawal-related emotions produce a right lateralized pFA (e.g., Coan & Allen, 2004). Importantly, working memory (WM) is lateralized in strikingly similar ways. Areas involved in verbal WM tend to be more left lateralized, whereas areas associated with spatial WM tend to be more right lateralized (e.g., D'Esposito et al., 1998). Thus, positive and negative affective states produce patterns of hemispheric asymmetry that closely resemble those produced by verbal and spatial cognitive demands, respectively (e.g., Gray et al., 2001). Therefore, we hypothesized that emotion/cognition alignment would produce functional benefits on performance and processing. Collaborating with Jim Coan, we induced either a positive or negative mood, and then administered either a verbal or spatial 2-back task, which required verbal or spatial WM capacities, respectively. We found two effects. First, alignment of emotion and cognitive task demands reduced hemispheric specific processing, as evidenced by reduced pFA. Second, we observed that reduced asymmetry predicted performance on the verbal WM task, indicating that such alignments also benefit performance.

Sadness Reduces Affective and Semantic Priming

An addition question concerned whether affect influences only explicit cognitive processes or also influences implicit, automatic processes. Semantic and affective priming tasks (Neely, 2001; Klauer & Musch, 2001) were used to examine this question. Because priming is believed to involve relational processing, I expected positive moods to enhance and negative moods to impair priming effects. Positive and negative moods were induced prior to participants completing semantic, affective, or lexical decision priming tasks (Storbeck & Clore, 2008). The results were highly consistent across all three priming tasks. Positive affect enhanced and negative affect inhibited priming in each case. The results indicate that affective states influence processing on automatic, implicit tasks, as well as processing on deliberative, explicit tasks.

My current research extends these initial studies on affect and priming using EEG and ERPs. The goal of this research is to examine further possible automatic influences of affect on relational processing, and to examine whether evidence of neural efficiency is evident when happy individuals are engaged in priming tasks. I will be examining whether the N400 component, which is an ERP component related to semantic analysis, is influenced by affective states. Affective influence on the N400 would provide further evidence of affective regulation of automatic semantic processing. My current research, therefore, investigates the influence of affective states on styles of processing, neural activation patterns, and the activation of concepts.

Arousal-as-Urgency Hypothesis: Arousal Moderates Activation of Attitudes and Judgments

In collaboration with Gerald Clore, I have proposed an arousal-as-urgency corollary to the affect-as-information framework (Storbeck & Clore, 2008). Specifically, we suggest that the arousal dimension of affect can amplify evaluations, increase reliance on particular styles of learning, and enhance long term memory for events. To test whether arousal can amplify evaluations, we conducted an experiment in which attitudes concerning two novel individuals were learned. Subsequently, the implicit attitudes of participants were assessed both immediately and after a several day delay. We discovered that induced emotional arousal led to stronger implicit evaluations for the two novel individuals compared to a non-aroused control group. However, two days later, implicit attitudes were identical between the two groups. Thus, emotional arousal strengthened immediate but not delayed evaluations of two novel individuals.

In a subsequent study, I found that arousal polarized both negative and positive implicit self-evaluations. Prior research had observed that by placing one's foot in a bucket of ice water can selectively activate the ipsilateral side of the brain. In addition, evidence indicates that the right hemisphere is sensitive to negative information, whereas the left hemisphere is sensitive to positive information. Consistent with this hypothesis, I found that the right foot condition had a more negative implicit self-evaluation score compared to the left foot and warm water conditions. This, is turning out to be an interesting line of research in which the influence of arousal on judgment appears to depend on the precise locus of activation.

The same set of concerns about the influences of arousal on emotionally relevant judgments has led to a series of studies in collaboration with Jeanine Stefanucci of the College of William and Mary. I wanted to know whether such arousal would have similar influences when judgment concerned objective physical attributes rather than subjective, psychological ones. In three studies, we manipulated emotional arousal with pictures, and we discovered that aroused, compared to non-aroused, individuals overestimated the height of a balcony on which they were standing. These studies suggest that the urgency information conveyed by autonomic arousal has pervasive influences not only on judgment of affectivity but also on arousal-relevant judgments.

Affect and Cognition: Is one more basic?

One broad theoretical question arises: Are affect and cognition independent systems or are they integrated? Several prominent emotion theories suggest that the affective system may be independent from cognition (Bargh, 1997; Zajonc, 2001). However, I and several colleagues (Storbeck, Robinson & McCourtt, 2006, GRP ) have reviewed the social psychological and neuroscience evidence, which led us to the conclusion that affect and cognitive processes are highly integrated. With this assumption, we have proposed that specific emotions modulate selective cognitive processes. Moreover, we suggest that affect can regulate cognitive processes from initial stages of perception to the final stages of memory consolidation. For example, we believe that both dimensions of affect (valence and arousal) modulate cognitive processes (Clore & Storbeck, in press). Specifically, we propose that valence governs processing style (e.g., relational vs. item-specific), whereas arousal governs attention and consolidation. In addition, both valence and arousal can interact to influence affective evaluations and behavior (see Robinson, Storbeck, Meier, & Kirkeby, 2004; Robinson, 1998). Thus, I propose that affect is integrated with cognitive processes, and as a result, that affect routinely modulates cognition, and cognition constantly modulates affect.

Affective Priming and Mere Exposure are highly visible and intriguing phenomena that have captured people's imagination. From a strong emphasis on such phenomena, an “affective primacy” view has arisen, which says that affect dominates the early processing of stimuli. Although it is true that affect can be elicited quickly, current data and neurological models suggest that affect does not in fact arise before other cognitive and semantic processes occur ( Storbeck, Robinson & McCourtt, 2006, GRP ). It appears that a truly useful view of emotion and its effects will ultimately require that it be integrated with a larger understanding of the cognitive functions of the brain.

For instance, traditional studies of semantic priming suggest that memory is organized by descriptive features (e.g., McClelland, 2003; Neely, 1991). On the other hand, recent studies of affective priming by social psychologists imply that memory is organized by affective features (e.g., Ferguson & Bargh, 2003). One way to resolve this conflict is to examine empirically whether individuals are faster to access descriptive or affective information from memory. We studied this question in four priming studies, some employing words and some pictures. Consistently, the dominance of descriptive over affective priming was observed, and we concluded that implicit descriptive relations were more likely to be accessed than affective relations. We found affective priming only when affective task demands were made salient and when the stimuli used eliminated the possibility of descriptive categorization ( Storbeck & Robinson, 2004, PSPB ). Such evidence suggests that what appears to be affective priming is actually a special case of semantic priming. This conclusion is supported by other studies that also suggest that affective priming depends on semantic associations in memory (e.g., De Houwer & Randell, 2004; Kemp-Wheeler & Hill, 1992; Erdley & D'Agostino, 1988).

The studies described above concerned the relative accessibility of descriptive and affective attributes. To complement these studies, we then asked which type of information is accessed faster. In answering this question, we employed a forced-choice response window paradigm. This paradigm forces participants to make rapid descriptive and affective categorizations and examines accuracy as the dependent measure. We found that within the shortest response window, participants were more accurate at making descriptive than affective classifications ( Storbeck, Robinson, Ram, & Meier, in prep ). This discovery, that semantic associations are accessed faster than affective associations, again implies that semantic memory is organized around descriptive features, which can include, but are not dominated by, affective features. Using subliminal priming techniques, Greenwald and colleagues (2004) have also produced evidence that supports such conclusions.

In addition to behavioral studies, I have conducted a systematic review that included relevant work in cognitive neuroscience. This evidence also leads to the conclusion that semantic rather than affective information is primary, and that affective reactions to lexical and pictorial stimuli depend on prior semantic analysis. The review ( Storbeck, Robinson & McCourtt, 2006, GRP) presented evidence that stimuli are first categorized and identified at an unconscious level on the basis of their semantic features. This information can then serve as a basis for affect elicitation. In addition, the review provides substantial evidence that both affective priming and mere exposure effects actually rely on cognitive processing.

Can mood influence the accessibility of attitudes?

Our previous studies found that mood influences the accessibility of general semantic associations ( Storbeck & Clore, submitted ). In addition, we are also currently investigating whether mood can influence the accessibility of implicit attitudes. The implicit association test (IAT) was designed to measure implicit attitudes by assessing their underlying automatic evaluations (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). With Brian Nosek, I am conducting a web-based study to investigate whether daily mood can influence the accessibility of implicit attitudes, as measured by the IAT. We expect that individuals who report a higher level of positive affect before taking the IAT on the web will have greater accessibility for their implicit attitudes. If so, we should see a larger IAT effect size for these individuals when compared to individuals in less positive moods ( Storbeck & Nosek – Project Implicit ). Such findings would be consistent with the affect-as-information approach, which suggests that by virtue of increased relational processing, individuals in positive moods should have greater access to target-relevant attitudes than those in negative moods.

We are also examing examines how emotion may facilitate the learning of attitudes towards novel groups. This project (Storbeck, Ranganath, & Nosek) investigates whether emotional arousal can enhance the learning about the characteristics of novel groups, and whether the affect biases behavioral impressions of two fictitious groups. We expect that emotional arousal will facilitate the acquisition of attitudes towards novel groups as well as their preservation over time.

Arousal and Valence

Other conclusions from my research that challenge conventional thinking about affect flow from a discovery that, rather than functioning independently as is usually assumed, valence and arousal interact to influence evaluation. Models of affect typically include both an arousal and a valence component (e.g., Larsen & Diener, 1991). Emotional theorists generally find that self-reports of valence and arousal show two independent dimensions (e.g., Lang, 1995; Russell & Feldman-Barrett, 1999). Recent papers have suggested a simple model focused only on valence and suggest that positive items elicit approach and negative items elicit avoidance tendencies (e.g., Cacciopo et al., 1993; Neumann, Forster, & Strack, 2003). Some other models have focused only on arousal and suggest that intense, arousing stimuli trigger avoidance, whereas mild, familiar stimuli trigger approach tendencies (Zajonc, 2001). However, we proposed, and have found, that evaluations and approach-avoidance tendencies depend on both the arousal and the valence components.

In a series of studies, we discovered that arousal and valence interact to influence evaluations and approach-avoidance tendencies ( Robinson, Storbeck, Meier, & Kirkeby, 2004, PSPB ). Both words and pictures were viewed in a design that varied high vs. low arousal and positive vs. negative affect. We found a robust and interesting interaction involving speed of response. The quickest evaluations were for negative, high arousal stimuli and positive, low arousal stimuli. Two experiments found that the quickest decisions for both approach and avoidance occurred when items were negative and high in arousal or positive and low in arousal. This particular finding is interesting, because most approach-avoidance models propose that individuals are especially fast when approaching positive or avoiding negative objects (e.g., Neumann et al., 2003). However, varying arousal in addition to valence allowed us to see that this simple dichotomous model does not hold up. These findings show that, despite popular assumptions, arousal and valence do not, in fact, function independently, but interact in a systematic way to influence evaluations and emotion-related behavior ( Robinson, Storbeck, et al., 2004, PSPB).