74 research outputs found
The influence of affect on attitude
Priests of the medieval Catholic Church understood something about the relationship between affect and attitude. To instill the proper attitude in parishioners, priests dramatized the power of liturgy to save them from Hell in a service in which the experience of darkness and fear gave way to light and familiar liturgy. These ceremonies “were written and performed so as to first arouse and then allay anxieties and fears ” (Scott, 2003, p. 227): The service usually began in the dark of night with the gothic cathedral’s nave filled with worship-pers cast into total darkness. Terrifying noises, wailing, shrieks, screams, and clanging of metal mimicked the chaos of hell, giving frightened witnesses a taste of what they could expect if they were tempted to stray. After a prolonged period of this imitation of hell, the cathedral’s interior gradually became filled with the blaze of a thousand lights. As the gloom diminished, cacophony was supplanted by the measured tones of Gregorian chants and polyphony. Light and divine order replaced darkness and chaos (R. Scott, personal correspondence, March 15, 2004). This ceremony was designed to buttress beliefs by experience and to transfigure abstractions into attitudes. In place of merely hearing about “the chaos and perdition of hell that regular performances of liturgy were designed to hold in check ” (Scott, 2003), parishioners shoul
For Love or Money: Some Emotional Foundations of Rationality
Having emotions represents what people value. Just as cognition concerns whether things are true and false; emotion is about whether they are good or bad. Thus, emotion may be a necessity for rationality, rather than its antithesis. Our emotion research shows that emotional feelings provide compelling information about the value of outcomes, actions, and objects. As a result, although it can also lead to excess, emotions provide a coherent basis for judgment and decision. In addition, I suggest that the current psychological theory is helpful in thinking about rationality because it assumes more than one mode of reasoning. Similarly, current emotion theory is helpful because it assumes more than one kind of good
For Love or Money: Some Emotional Foundations of Rationality
Having emotions represents what people value. Just as cognition concerns whether things are true and false; emotion is about whether they are good or bad. Thus, emotion may be a necessity for rationality, rather than its antithesis. Our emotion research shows that emotional feelings provide compelling information about the value of outcomes, actions, and objects. As a result, although it can also lead to excess, emotions provide a coherent basis for judgment and decision. In addition, I suggest that the current psychological theory is helpful in thinking about rationality because it assumes more than one mode of reasoning. Similarly, current emotion theory is helpful because it assumes more than one kind of good
Disgust as embodied moral judgment.
How, and for whom, does disgust influence moral judgment? In four experiments participants made moral judgments while experiencing extraneous feelings of disgust. Disgust was induced in Experiment 1 by exposure to a bad smell, in Experiment 2 by working in a disgusting room, in Experiment 3 by recalling a physically disgusting experience, and in Experiment 4 through a video induction. In each case, the results showed that disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments relative to controls. Experiment 4 found that disgust had a different effect on moral judgment than did sadness. In addition, Experiments 2-4 showed that the role of disgust in severity of moral judgments depends on participants' sensitivity to their own bodily sensations. Taken together, these data indicate the importance-and specificity-of gut feelings in moral judgments
Affective incoherence: when affective concepts and embodied reactions clash.
In five studies, the authors examined the effects on cognitive performance of coherence and incoherence between conceptual and experiential sources of affective information. The studies crossed the priming of happy and sad concepts with affective experiences. In different experiments, these included approach or avoidance actions, happy or sad feelings, and happy or sad expressive behaviors. In all studies, coherence between affective concepts and affective experiences led to better recall of a story than did affective incoherence. The authors suggest that the experience of such experiential affective cues serves as evidence of the appropriateness of affective concepts that come to mind. The results suggest that affective coherence has epistemic benefits and that incoherence is costly in terms of cognitive performance
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Affect : a functional perspective
Bibliography: leaves 55-63Supported in part by the National Institute of Education under contract no. HEW-NIE-C-400-76-011
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