Collaborative Research: Implicit bivalence: Testing boundaries, causes, and consequences of coactivating positive and negative implicit evaluations

从亲密的人到相对陌生的人，社交互动都涉及奖励（例如，舒适、认可、喜悦）和成本（例如，拒绝、反对、伤害）。即使是处于高度满意关系中的人也很容易回忆起与伴侣的负面互动。理论和直觉都认为，对重要他人的感觉是复杂的。然而，很少有证据表明这种复杂性是隐含存在的（即，人们通常无法刻意记住但仍会影响行为的知识）。最近的研究表明，在感知到一个重要的另一半的最初几毫秒内，积极和消极的信息都会被触发。很明显，在一个人的生活中，最喜欢的那个人会强烈地立即激活积极的评价，但这个人也会立即激活一些消极的评价。目前的研究调查了这种隐含二价的早期特征（即，立即激活积极性和消极性）。具体地说，内隐双价是否只有在与之有着长期情感复杂经历的重要他人身上才能触发？或者，一个没有过去经验的陌生人是否会触发内隐的二价性，因为与任何人的互动都有可能是有益的，但也是昂贵的？重要的是，内隐二价对人际关系中的心理功能和行为有什么影响？理解当一个人遇到或想到他人时立即浮现在脑海中的评价，可以帮助人们快速理解社会动态的回报和成本，并对灵活和适应性的社会功能产生影响。他人的心理表征是人类行为和颜色感知的认知基石，也是对一个人的行为和与他们的社会互动的解释。心理表征帮助人们解释他人并对他人做出反应的一种方式是通过快速和自发的评估。每当一个人遇到另一个人，或者只是想到另一个人，这些隐性的评价就会毫不费力地、无意地被触发。内隐评价提供了关于另一个人的积极和消极的即时信息，影响我们对另一个人的想法和行为。但最初的研究表明，与其说是其他人触发了积极或消极情绪，不如说是他们同时触发了积极和消极情绪，即使是对重要的人也是如此。目前的工作调查了这种情感复杂性是如何发展的，它是为谁出现的，以及它对行为有什么后果。在这样做的时候，研究探讨了两个理论解释为什么内隐二价出现的合理性。一种解释认为，当关于态度对象的信息在情感上复杂时，二价就会出现，这意味着二价会发生在广泛的对象和人身上，但不会发生在新遇到的其他人身上。另一种观点认为，二价性使感知者准备对所有人做出反应，因为他们有可能以积极和消极的方式行事，这表明二价性可能会出现在其他人身上，而不管过去的历史如何。这项工作利用了一系列的研究设计来评估对人和日常物品的内隐评价（例如，诱人的食物，香烟），增加了发现的普遍性，以及对于在实验室中实验性地创建隐式评估的人和对象（例如，通过将人或物体与有益的或令人厌恶的经历相关联）。该研究结果将为社会认知模型提供信息，并对矛盾心理、态度、内隐认知和关系科学的理论和研究产生影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Social interactions, ranging from close others to relative strangers, involve rewards (e.g., comfort, approval, joy) and costs (e.g., rejection, disapproval, hurt). Even individuals in highly satisfied relationships can readily recall negative interactions with their partner. Both theory and intuition assume that feelings about significant others are complex. Yet, there is scant evidence that this complexity exists implicitly (i.e., knowledge that people often cannot deliberately bring to mind but that still impacts behaviors). Recent work shows that in the first milliseconds of perceiving a significant other, both positive and negative information is triggered. Clearly, the single individual most liked in a person’s life strongly activates immediate positive evaluations, but this same person also activates some negative evaluations immediately as well. The current studies investigate this early signature of implicit bivalence (i.e., immediately activated positivity and negativity). Specifically, is implicit bivalence triggered only by significant others with whom one has a long history of affectively-complex experiences? Alternatively, might a stranger with whom one has no past experience trigger implicit bivalence because interactions with any person have the potential to be rewarding but also costly? Importantly, what are the consequences of implicit bivalence for psychological functioning and behavior in relationships? Understanding the evaluations that immediately come to mind when one encounters or thinks about others informs how people quickly make sense of the rewards and costs of social dynamics, with implications for flexible and adaptive social functioning.Mental representations of others are the cognitive building blocks of human behavior and color perceptions and interpretations of a person’s actions and social interactions with them. One way in which mental representations help people to interpret and react toward others is through enabling rapid and spontaneous evaluations of them. These implicit evaluations are triggered effortlessly and unintentionally whenever one encounters, or simply thinks of, another person. Implicit evaluations deliver immediate information about the positivity and negativity of another person, influencing how we think and behave toward that other person. But initial research has revealed that rather than other people triggering either positivity or negativity, they in fact trigger both positivity and negativity, even for significant others. The current work investigates how this affective complexity develops, for whom it emerges, and what consequences it has for behavior. In so doing, the research examines the plausibility of two theoretical accounts for why implicit bivalence emerges. One account suggests that bivalence emerges whenever the information about the attitude object is affectively complex, which would suggest that bivalence occurs toward a wide range of objects and people but not for newly encountered others. The other view suggests that bivalence prepares the perceiver to react to all people because of their potential to behave in a positive and negative manner, which would suggest that bivalence might emerge for others regardless of any past history. The work utilizes a range of research designs to assess implicit evaluations for people and for everyday objects (e.g., tempting foods, cigarettes), increasing the generalizability of the findings, as well as for people and objects for which implicit evaluations are experimentally created in the lab (e.g., by associating a person or object with rewarding or aversive experiences). The findings will inform models of social cognition, with implications for theory and research on ambivalence, attitudes, implicit cognition, and relationship science.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.