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

社会互动，从亲近的人到相对陌生的人，都包括回报(例如，安慰、认可、喜悦)和成本(例如，拒绝、反对、伤害)。即使是关系非常满意的人，也能很容易地回忆起与伴侣的负面互动。理论和直觉都假设，对重要他人的感觉是复杂的。然而，几乎没有证据表明这种复杂性是隐含存在的(即人们经常无法刻意联想到的知识，但它仍然影响着行为)。最近的研究表明，在感知到另一半的最初几毫秒内，积极和消极的信息都会被触发。显然，一个人生活中最受欢迎的一个人会立即激活积极的评价，但这个人也会立即激活一些负面的评价。目前的研究探讨了这种早期的内隐二价性特征(即，立即激活的积极和消极)。具体地说，内隐二价性是不是只由与你有长期复杂情感经历的重要他人触发的？或者，一个与自己没有过往经验的陌生人会不会因为与任何人的互动都有可能带来回报但也会付出代价而引发隐性的二元性？重要的是，内隐二价性对人际关系中的心理功能和行为有什么影响？当一个人遇到或想着别人时，脑海中立即浮现出的评价会让人们知道，人们是如何迅速理解社会动态的回报和成本的，这对灵活和适应性的社会功能具有影响。对他人的心理表征是人类行为的认知基石，以及对一个人的行为和与他们的社会互动的颜色感知和解释。心理表征帮助人们对他人做出解释和反应的一种方式是，能够对他人进行快速、自发的评估。每当一个人遇到或只是想到另一个人时，这些隐含的评估就会毫不费力地被无意地触发。含蓄的评价提供了关于另一个人的积极和消极的即时信息，影响了我们对另一个人的思考和行为。但初步研究表明，与其他人引发积极或消极情绪不同，它们实际上既会引发积极情绪，也会引发负面情绪，即使是对其他重要的人来说也是如此。目前的研究调查了这种情感复杂性是如何发展起来的，对谁来说是出现的，以及它对行为产生了什么后果。在这样做的过程中，这项研究检验了为什么会出现隐性二价性的两种理论解释的合理性。一种解释认为，当关于态度对象的信息非常复杂时，就会出现二价化，这表明二价化发生在广泛的对象和人身上，而不是新遇到的其他人。另一种观点认为，二价体使感知者准备好对所有人做出反应，因为他们有可能以积极和消极的方式行事，这意味着无论过去的历史如何，二价体可能会出现在其他人身上。这项工作利用一系列研究设计来评估对人和对日常物品(例如，诱人的食物、香烟)的隐性评估，增加了研究结果的概括性，以及对在实验室实验中对其进行隐性评估的人和对象(例如，通过将个人或对象与奖励或令人厌恶的体验相关联)。这些发现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。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.