Affect and processing ease

一个研究项目调查了这样一个假设，即情感反应反映了刺激处理中涉及的心理操作的容易程度。这一假说有望在一个共同的理论框架下整合各种明显不相关的偏好现象。有人提出，一个单一的过程-处理流畅性的增强-以下现象的基础：（一）单纯曝光效应（重复增加对物体的喜爱），（ii）平均值中的美丽效应（原型对象比非原型对象更受欢迎），（iii）对以较高清晰度或较高图形-背景对比度呈现的对象的偏好，（iv）对以较长持续时间呈现的对象的偏好，本研究系统地分析了加工流畅性、情感反应和评价判断之间的关系。这些研究采用了各种偏好任务（喜欢图片，人物，单词，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）。本研究旨在探讨流畅性-情感-判断关系的具体心理机制，并通过心理生理学的测量来检验潜在的情感反应的本质，从而加深我们对情感与认知之间关系的理解。具体而言，它将：（i）确定情感反应的新来源（加工动力学），（ii）提供经典现象的解释，例如单纯暴露效应和平均值中的美丽效应，（iii）预测新的偏好现象，例如启动对情感反应的影响，这些情感反应不是由目标的语义解释介导的，以及（iv）识别在社会感知任务中可能由不同流畅性导致的潜在偏差。

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.