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

Too close for comfort: Stimulus valence moderates the influence of motivational orientation on distance perception

The relationship between approach and avoidance motivational orientations and valenced stimuli has previously been discussed in relation to physical distance. However, it has remained unclear whether approach and avoidance can actually change how people perceive the physical distance to valenced stimuli. Drawing on research on motivational orientation and valence as well as the motivated perception account, we predicted that valenced stimuli incompatible with motivational orientation would be perceived as closer than compatible stimuli because they motivate the goal of resolving the inconsistency arising from discrepant affective information. This prediction was supported in a series of 4 experiments. Findings were consistent across different manipulations of motivational orientation, including motor movements (Experiments 1 and 2) and cognitive procedures (Experiments 3 and 4), and across different types of stimuli, including abstract words (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and photos of concrete objects (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 further investigated the mechanism behind the influence of incompatibility versus compatibility between motivational orientation and valence on distance perception. The findings showed that, relative to compatibility, incompatibility resulted in participants solving more anagrams, presumably because the goal-related motivational state gave rise to a general state of activation. Furthermore, perceptual estimates were correlated with the activity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the activity of the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) relative to the BIS, further suggesting that goal-related motivation may be associated with perception. Overall, the present research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that visual perception is shaped by motivational considerations

The influence of social power on weight perception.

Lee, E. H., & Schnall, S. (in press). The influence of social power on weight perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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