Is the approach avoidance compatibility effect moderated by word imageability?

The approach/avoidance (AA) compatibility effect refers to the fact that individuals respond faster by an approach movement to positive than to negative stimuli, whereas they respond faster by an avoidance movement to negative than to positive stimuli. Although this effect has been observed in many studies, the underlying mechanisms remain still unclear. On the basis of recent studies suggesting a key role of sensorimotor information in the emergence of the AA compatibility effect, the present study aimed to investigate the specific role of visual information, operationalised through word imageability, in the production of the AA compatibility effect. We orthogonally manipulated the emotional valence (positive/negative) and the imageability (low/high) of words in an incidental online-AA task (i.e., in the absence of valence processing goals) using a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 300 ms. In line with previous studies, Experiment 1 revealed an AA compatibility effect in the absence of valence processing goals. However, this effect was not moderated by word imageability. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the absence of influence of word imageability could be due to the short SOA (300 ms) used in this experiment. We used the same design as in Experiment 1 and manipulated the SOA (400 vs 600 ms). We again observed an AA compatibility effect which was not moderated by word imageability, whatever the SOA used. The results of both experiments suggest the absence of any influence of sensorimotor information in the AA compatibility effect, at least when provided by the to-be-approached/avoided stimulus.

A dataset on the sensory and affective perception of Bordeaux and Rioja red wines collected from French and Spanish consumers at home and international wine students in the lab.

This article describes a dataset providing temporal sensory descriptions and affective answers for red wines: two Bordeaux and two Riojas. The wines were tasted at home by French (FR, n=106) and Spanish (SP, n=98) consumers and in the lab by wine students (WC, n=47). Standardized information was displayed on the samples (country and region of origin, name, producer, vintage, alcohol content). The FR and SP panels were split into three groups, the first having no rating information, the second having expert rating information (based on Wine Advocate ratings), and the third having consumer rating information (based on online Vivino reviews). The participants first rated their expected liking for the four wines. Then, for each wine sample, they had (in order) to taste the sample while being video recorded, rate their liking, temporally describe the sequence of sensations they perceived using Free-Comment Attack-Evolution-Finish, answer several questions about familiarity and quality perception, and declare their willingness to pay (reserve price). Then, they had to rank the four wines according to their quality. General questions about wine involvement, subjective wine knowledge, valuation behaviour, purchasing, and consumption patterns were asked. Finally, an auction was resolved: participants declaring a reserve price greater than the drawn price won a bottle. The data were used to assess the influence of culture and expertise on temporal sensory evaluations in an article entitled "Using Free-Comment to investigate expertise and cultural differences in wine sensory description". The data can be reused by researchers interested in studying the impact of external information on preferences and choices or investigating the sensory drivers of liking.

The impact of minimal exposure to affective information on mood and its moderation by prime visibility: a meta-analysis.

This article presents a meta-analysis of the impact of minimal exposure to affective stimuli on the emergence of enduring conscious affective feelings. Theories often assume that such affective feelings are linked to automatic appraisals of events (i.e. in the absence of an evaluative processing goal). However, few studies have tested this hypothesis. Moreover, they have provided divergent results. We propose a meta-analysis of these studies to get a clearer picture on this issue. The meta-analysis includes 22 studies (37 effect sizes; combined N = 2159) in which participants were repeatedly exposed to affective stimuli in the absence of an evaluative processing goal before their mood was measured. In this analysis, we focused on the type of stimulus presentation (i.e. visible vs. masked) as well as on the type of stimulus (i.e. faces, pictures, words). The results indicate that the effect of a stimulus is moderated by the visibility of the stimuli. Repeated exposure to visible stimuli leads to congruency effects (i.e. positive stimuli lead to positive feelings), whereas exposure to masked stimuli leads to contrast effects (i.e. positive stimuli lead to negative feelings). Moreover, these effects seem to be restricted to some types of stimuli, with no detectable effects of emotional faces.

The impact of automatic evaluation on mood: an awareness-dependent effect.

How do affective feelings arise? Most theories consider that affective feelings result from the appraisals of an event, these appraisals being the consequences of automatic evaluations processes that can occur pre-consciously. However, studies testing this hypothesis have provided divergent results. We hypothesised that the discrepancy could be due to the visibility of the affective stimuli. We conducted two studies in which we manipulated this factor. Moreover, to exclude a possible explanation of these effects in terms of semantic priming or of experimental demand, we measured participants' facial expressions with EMG in addition to self-report measures (BMIS). The two studies showed that repeated brief exposure to visible positive stimuli (words, Experiment 1 - pictures, Experiment 2) led to more positive feelings than exposure to negative stimuli. In contrast, when the stimuli were masked, the reversed pattern of results was observed. Results on facial EMG indicate similar effects. Consistent with the automatic evaluation hypothesis, the results suggest that assimilative effects of affective stimuli on affective feelings can be observed after a repeated brief presentation of primes, provided that the stimuli are visible. The contrast effects observed when stimuli were masked appear reliable but remain in need for further theoretical explanation.

The combination of multiple affective experiences and their impact on valuation judgments.

People's affective experiences can be influenced by multiple informational inputs. It remains unclear however how this occurs? In this paper, we investigate the construction of affective experiences dependent on the varying number of previously presented, affectively-charged, informational inputs. In addition, because affect is often used as a cue in judgment and decision-making, we probe whether the resulting affective experience is mapped onto people's valuation judgments (how much people are willing-to-pay for target rewards and experiences). In three studies, we show that people's overall affective experience is constructed by averaging the affect of the previously presented, affectively-charged inputs. Subsequently, we find that people rely on the resulting affective experience as a cue for their judgments, as willingness-to-pay valuations were predicted by the combined affective experience. We measured integral, expected, as well as momentary affect - using both self-report and physiological measures. We discuss the potential for studying further how multiple inputs change affect as well as the implications for judgment and decision making.

The online-VAAST: A short and online tool to measure spontaneous approach and avoidance tendencies.

Among the great variety of approach/avoidance tasks, the Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST, Rougier et al., 2018) appears to be a promising tool. Previous work showed that the VAAST leads to large and replicable compatibility effects (e.g., faster response time to approach positive stimuli and avoid negative stimuli than the reverse). In the present contribution, we provide an online and easy-to-use version of the VAAST (namely, the online-VAAST). Across four experiments, we show that the online-VAAST produces effects that are of similar magnitude to those of the lab version of this task. Specifically, we obtained compatibility effects when using positive/negative words (Experiment 1), positive/negative images (Experiment 2), French/North-African first names (Experiment 3), and European American/African American first names (Experiment 4). Moreover, these effects emerged with culturally different populations (i.e., Americans in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, French in Experiment 3). Overall, the online-VAAST could be of great interest for all researchers interested in measuring approach/avoidance tendencies: Its specificities allow reaching large samples both offline and online with no accessibility constraints regarding programming abilities or program copyright.

Ageing-related stereotypes in memory: When the beliefs come true.

Age-related stereotype concerns culturally shared beliefs about the inevitable decline of memory with age. In this study, stereotype priming and stereotype threat manipulations were used to explore the impact of age-related stereotype on metamemory beliefs and episodic memory performance. Ninety-two older participants who reported the same perceived memory functioning were divided into two groups: a threatened group and a non-threatened group (control). First, the threatened group was primed with an ageing stereotype questionnaire. Then, both groups were administered memory complaints and memory self-efficacy questionnaires to measure metamemory beliefs. Finally, both groups were administered the Logical Memory task to measure episodic memory, for the threatened group the instructions were manipulated to enhance the stereotype threat. Results indicated that the threatened individuals reported more memory complaints and less memory efficacy, and had lower scores than the control group on the logical memory task. A multiple mediation analysis revealed that the stereotype threat effect on the episodic memory performance was mediated by both memory complaints and memory self-efficacy. This study revealed that stereotype threat impacts belief in one's own memory functioning, which in turn impairs episodic memory performance.

Emotional norms for 524 French personality trait words.

Newly measured rating norms provide a database of emotion-related dimensions for 524 French trait words. Measures include valence, approach/avoidance tendencies associated with the trait, possessor- and other-relevance of the trait, and discrete emotions conveyed by the trait (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness). The normative data were obtained from 328 participants and were revealed to be stable across samples and gender. These data go beyond a dimensional structure and consider more fine-grained descriptions such as the categorical emotions, as well as the perspective of the evaluator conveyed by the traits. They should thus be particularly useful for researchers interested in emotion or in the emotional dimension of cognition, action, or personality. The database is available as supplementary material.

Number generation bias after action observation.

Recent studies have demonstrated that conceptual and abstract knowledge could rely on and could be influenced by sensory-motor processing of usual goal-directed actions. In line with this, interactions have been reported between number magnitude and finger grip with, for example, small-magnitude numbers priming grip closure and large-magnitude numbers priming grip aperture. Here, we assessed whether observing a closing or opening grip was able to influence the magnitude of the numbers produced in a random number generation task, and we tested whether this effect was specific to biological hand actions by using non-biological fake hands with the same closure or aperture amplitude. The participants were asked to produce as randomly as possible numbers between 1 and 10 after they observed a change in posture (i.e. grip closing or grip opening) or in colour (i.e. red or blue hand). The results revealed that the participants produced more often small numbers than large ones after observing a grip closing, whereas they produced equally often small and large numbers after observing a grip opening or colour changes. Importantly, this effect was only present for the biological hands but not for the non-biological fake hands. This finding demonstrates that observing a biological grip closing conveys small-magnitude information, which, in turn, influences the mental selection of a numerical response. We discuss our results in the light of the internal random generator process proposed in the domain of numerical cognition and argue that number semantics is stored with a code governed by sensory-motor mechanisms.

Unconscious addition: when we unconsciously initiate and follow arithmetic rules.

This research shows that people can unconsciously initiate and follow arithmetic rules (e.g., addition). Participants were asked to detect whether a symbol was a digit. This symbol was preceded by 2 digits and a subliminal instruction: add or a control instruction. Participants were faster at identifying a symbol as a number when the symbol was equal to the sum of the 2 digits and they received the instruction to add the digits, suggesting that people can unconsciously solve arithmetic problems. Experiments 2 and 3 replicate these findings and demonstrate that the underlying processes can operate when the to-be-added digits are not perceived consciously. Thus, the unconscious can do (at least simple) arithmetic, such as addition.

Embodiment in attitudes, social perception, and emotion.

Findings in the social psychology literatures on attitudes, social perception, and emotion demonstrate that social information processing involves embodiment, where embodiment refers both to actual bodily states and to simulations of experience in the brain's modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection. We show that embodiment underlies social information processing when the perceiver interacts with actual social objects (online cognition) and when the perceiver represents social objects in their absence (offline cognition). Although many empirical demonstrations of social embodiment exist, no particularly compelling account of them has been offered. We propose that theories of embodied cognition, such as the Perceptual Symbol Systems (PSS) account (Barsalou, 1999), explain and integrate these findings, and that they also suggest exciting new directions for research. We compare the PSS account to a variety of related proposals and show how it addresses criticisms that have previously posed problems for the general embodiment approach.

Effects of the activation of affective information on stereotyping: when sadness increases stereotype use.

Two studies explored the impact of mere activation of affective information on the use of stereotypes in social judgment. These studies provided consistent results showing that the activation of information related to sadness increases reliance on stereotypes, whereas the activation of information related to happiness decreases it. These results were obtained in the absence of affective state changes among the participants and with the use of two different priming procedures (Study 1: scrambled sentences, Study 2: subliminal priming) and two different judgment tasks (Study 1: impression formation, Study 2: guilt judgment). Complementing the informational view of affective states, it is suggested that affective information of which people are not conscious activates behavioral tendencies of approach or of avoidance associated with the related emotion.