Affect-As-Information

Definition

How do we know whether or not we approve of some action or like some person? According to the affectas-information hypothesis, our feelings provide such information. Just as our smiles and frowns provide information about our reactions to others, our positive and negative feelings provide such information to ourselves. Like many psychological processes, emotional appraisals are generally unconscious. Hence, having evaluative information available from affective feelings can be highly useful.

Affective reactions are forms of evaluation, and experiencing one's own affective reactions provides information that something good or bad has been encountered. Such information can be compelling, because it may involve not only thoughts but also feelings, bodily reactions, and even action. Thus, specific emotions, like embarrassment, involve distinctive thoughts, feelings, and expressions, whereas general moods are less differentiated. Affective states can be thought of as having two components—affective valence, which provides information about how good or bad something is, and affective arousal, which signals its importance or urgency. Most research focuses on valence, but recent studies also examine arousal. They find that assessing events as important causes a release of adrenaline, which results in its consolidation into long-term memory. Thus, people remember well the events of September 11, 2001, but perhaps not so well those of September 10, 2001. For victims of highly traumatic events, such arousal-powered memories can become stressful and even disabling.

Judgment

Psychologists have traditionally argued that attitudes and evaluations depend on people's beliefs about what they are judging. In the early 1970s, social psychologist Charles Gouaux examined how variation in feelings (from mood-inducing films) and beliefs (about another person's political opinions) influenced liking. Gouaux found that the affective feelings of one person influenced attraction or dislike of another over and above the influence of the cognitive beliefs about that person.

But even after many demonstrations that affect influences attitude, the assumption persisted that such evaluative judgments must reflect evaluative beliefs. Positive or negative feelings were assumed to activate positive or negative beliefs about the person, which in turn influenced judgment. In contrast, the affect-asinformation view said that evaluative judgments are often made simply by asking oneself, “How do I feel about it?”

As part of a study of this process, people were telephoned and asked questions about their life satisfaction. They were called on early spring days that were either warm and sunny or cold and rainy. People reported more positive moods and greater life satisfaction on sunny than on rainy days. The explanation was that the weather influenced satisfaction ratings, because people misattributed their feelings about the weather as feelings about their “life as a whole.” To test this explanation, experimenters said they were calling from another city, so that they could ask some respondents, “How's the weather down there?” When [Page 14]respondents' attention was directed to the weather, the mood influences on life satisfaction disappeared. Asking about the weather did not influence the feelings themselves, but it did influence their apparent meaning. The experiment established that affect could influence evaluative judgment directly by conveying information about value.

Since emotions are rapid reactions to current mental and perceptual content, people generally know what their emotions are about. But the causes of moods and depressed feelings are often unclear. Without a salient cause, feelings become promiscuous, attaching themselves to whatever comes to mind. As a result, the affect from moods can influence judgments, and enduring feelings of depression and anxiety can create a discouraging and threatening world.

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