Affect and processing ease

一个研究项目调查了这样一种假设，即情感反应反映了涉及刺激处理的心理操作的难易程度。这一假设有望将各种表面上不相关的偏好现象整合在一个共同的理论框架下。有人提出，一个单一的过程——增强处理流畅性——是以下现象的基础：(i)单纯的曝光效应（重复增加对物体的喜爱），（ii）平均之美效应（原型物体比非原型物体更受喜爱），（iii）对以更高清晰度或更高的图形-背景对比度呈现的物体的偏好，（iv）对呈现时间较长的物体的偏好，以及(v)对以知觉或语义启动促进对其属性的心理加工的物体的偏好。本研究对加工流畅性、情感反应和评价判断之间的关系进行了系统的分析。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）。探讨了流畅-影响-判断联系的具体心理机制，并通过心理生理学测量来检验潜在情感反应的性质。这个研究项目将促进我们对情感和认知之间关系的理解。具体来说，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，如纯粹暴露效应和平均美效应，（iii）预测新的偏好现象，如启动对情感反应的影响，这些反应不受目标的语义解释的影响，以及（iv）确定社会感知任务中不同流畅性可能导致的潜在偏见。

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.