Affect and processing ease

一项研究项目调查了一种假设，即情感反应反映了刺激处理中涉及的心理操作的简易性。这一假说承诺将各种看似无关的偏好现象整合到一个共同的理论框架下。研究发现：(I)单纯暴露效应(重复增加对物体的喜爱)，(Ii)平均美效应(原型物体比非典型物体更受欢迎)，(Iii)对呈现更高清晰度或更高图形背景对比度的物体的偏好，(Iv)对呈现时间更长的物体的偏好，以及(V)当心理加工促进了对物体的属性的加工时，对物体的偏好。本研究系统地分析了加工流畅度、情感反应和评价性判断之间的关系。研究采用了各种偏好任务(喜欢图片、人物、词语、物体类别、抽象形状)和各种操作(语义启动、视觉启动、重复、清晰度)。本研究探讨了流利性-情感-判断联系的具体心理机制，并用心理生理学方法考察了潜在情感反应的性质。这项研究将促进我们对情感与认知之间关系的理解。具体地说，它将：(I)识别情感反应的新来源(加工动力学)，(Ii)解释经典现象，如单纯暴露效应和平均美效应，(Iii)预测新的偏好现象，如启动对不受目标语义解释中介的情感反应的影响，以及(Iv)识别社会知觉任务中不同流利度可能导致的潜在偏差。

A program of research investigates the hypothesis that affective responses reflect the ease of mental operations involved in stimulus processing. This hypothesis promises to integrate a variety of apparently unrelated preference phenomena under a common theoretical framework. It is proposed that a single process -- enhancement of processing fluency -- underlies the following phenomena: (i) the mere-exposure effect (repetition increases liking for objects), (ii) beauty-in-averages effect (prototypical objects are liked more then nonprototypical ones), (iii) preferences for objects presented with higher clarity or higher figure-ground contrast, (iv) preference for objects presented at longer durations, and (v) preference for objects when mental processing of their attributes has been facilitated with perceptual or semantic primes.This research offers a systematic analysis of the relation between processing fluency, affective responses, and evaluative judgments. The studies employ a variety of preference tasks (liking for pictures, persons, words, categories of objects, abstract shapes) and a variety of manipulations (semantic priming, visual priming, repetition, clarity). Specific psychological mechanisms underlying the fluency-affect-judgment connection are explored and the nature of the underlying affective reactions are examined with psychophysiological measures.This research project will advance our understanding of the relation between affect and cognition. Specifically, it will: (i) identify a new source of affective reactions (processing dynamics), (ii) provide an account of classic phenomena, such as the mere-exposure effect and beauty-in-averages effect, (iii) predict new preference phenomena, such as the influence of priming on affective responses that are not mediated by the semantic interpretation of the target, and (iv) identify potential biases that may result from differential fluency during social perception tasks.