Shane W. Bench

Discrete emotions predict changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology: a meta-analysis of experimental emotion elicitations

Our purpose in the present meta-analysis was to examine the extent to which discrete emotions elicit changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology; whether these changes are correlated as would be expected if emotions organize responses across these systems; and which factors moderate the magnitude of these effects. Studies (687; 4,946 effects, 49,473 participants) were included that elicited the discrete emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety as independent variables with adults. Consistent with discrete emotion theory, there were (a) moderate differences among discrete emotions; (b) differences among discrete negative emotions; and (c) correlated changes in behavior, experience, and physiology (cognition and judgment were mostly not correlated with other changes). Valence, valence-arousal, and approach-avoidance models of emotion were not as clearly supported. There was evidence that these factors are likely important components of emotion but that they could not fully account for the pattern of results. Most emotion elicitations were effective, although the efficacy varied with the emotions being compared. Picture presentations were overall the most effective elicitor of discrete emotions. Stronger effects of emotion elicitations were associated with happiness versus negative emotions, self-reported experience, a greater proportion of women (for elicitations of happiness and sadness), omission of a cover story, and participants alone versus in groups. Conclusions are limited by the inclusion of only some discrete emotions, exclusion of studies that did not elicit discrete emotions, few available effect sizes for some contrasts and moderators, and the methodological rigor of included studies.

On the Function of Boredom

Boredom is frequently considered inconsequential and has received relatively little research attention. We argue that boredom has important implications for human functioning, based on emotion theory and empirical evidence. Specifically, we argue that boredom motivates pursuit of new goals when the previous goal is no longer beneficial. Exploring alternate goals and experiences allows the attainment of goals that might be missed if people fail to reengage. Similar to other discrete emotions, we propose that boredom has specific and unique impacts on behavior, cognition, experience and physiology. Consistent with a broader argument that boredom encourages the behavioral pursuit of alternative goals, we argue that, while bored, attention to the current task is reduced, the experience of boredom is negative and aversive, and that boredom increases autonomic arousal to ready the pursuit of alternatives. By motivating desire for change from the current state, boredom increases opportunities to attain social, cognitive, emotional and experiential stimulation that could have been missed. We review the limited extant literature to support these claims, and call for more experimental boredom research.

A Functionalist Manifesto: Goal-Related Emotions From an Evolutionary Perspective

Functional theories posit that emotions are elicited by particular goal-related situations that represented adaptive problems and that emotions are evolved features of coordinated responses to those situations. Yet little theory or research has addressed the evolutionary aspects of these theories. We apply five criteria that can be used to judge whether features are adaptations. There is evidence that sadness, anger, and anxiety relate to unique changes in physiology, cognition, and behavior, those changes are correlated, situations that give rise to emotions are consistent, and emotions are complex. To date, there is little experimental evidence regarding whether discrete emotions resolve adaptive problems and do so relatively efficiently. Evidence supporting all criteria is required to claim that discrete emotions are evolved features.

Strength of affective reaction as a signal to think carefully

Analytic processes reduce biases, but it is not known how or when these processes will be deployed. Based on an affective signal hypothesis, relatively strong affective reactions were expected to result in increased analytic processing and reduced bias in judgement. The valence and strength of affective reactions were manipulated through varying outcomes in a game or evaluative conditioning of a stimulus. Relatively strong positive or negative affective reactions resulted in less desirability bias. Bias reduction only occurred if participants had time to deploy analytic processes and indicators of the degree of analytic processing (in the form of attentional control) predicted less bias. Affective processes have long been acknowledged as a source of bias, but these findings suggest affective processes are also integral to bias reduction.

Motivated perception of probabilistic information

Desirability bias is the tendency to judge that, all else being equal, positive outcomes are more likely to occur than negative outcomes. The provision of probabilistic information about the likelihood that events will occur is typically viewed as a way to influence judgments by grounding them in objective information. Yet probabilistic information may be perceived differently when people are motivated to arrive at a particular conclusion, enabling the desirability bias. The present investigation explored how probabilistic information is used and perceived when people are motivated. In a game of chance, desirability bias was present for judgments about the likelihood of outcomes occurring to the self but not an unaffiliated other despite equal probabilities (Study 1). Probabilities were perceived as having more variance, both subjectively and in terms of probability spread (Studies 2, 3a, and 5), when participants were motivated to arrive at a particular conclusion (for the self or another person on the same team). Further, desirability bias was greater when probabilities were perceived as having more variance, either due to wide versus narrow probability ranges or subjective uncertainty (Studies 3b and 4). Together, these findings demonstrate that people perceive probabilistic information as having more variance when they are motivated to arrive at a conclusion and that this greater perceived variability contributes to bias in judgment.

An alternative approach to analysis of mental states in experimental social cognition research

Establishing the mental states that affect human behavior is a primary goal of experiments on social cognitive processes. Such mental states can be manipulated only indirectly; therefore, after delivering a manipulation, researchers attempt to verify that the mental state of interest, the representation of a mental state, was in fact changed by the manipulation and that this change caused the observed effect. The usual procedure is to examine mean differences in a measure of the mental state of interest (a manipulation check) among experimental conditions and to infer whether the manipulation was effective. We describe a procedure that strengthens the construct validity of manipulations and, hence, causal inferences in experiments that focus on mental states using analyses familiar to most researchers. This procedure employs a traditional manipulation check that assesses the relationship between manipulations and mental states but, additionally, tests the relationship between the manipulation check and dependent measure.

Distraction from emotional information reduces biased judgements

Biases arising from emotional processes are some of the most robust behavioural effects in the social sciences. The goal of this investigation was to examine the extent to which the emotion regulation strategy of distraction could reduce biases in judgement known to result from emotional information. Study 1 explored lay views regarding whether distraction is an effective strategy to improve decision-making and revealed that participants did not endorse this strategy. Studies 2–5 focused on several established, robust biases that result from emotional information: loss aversion, desirability bias, risk aversion and optimistic bias. Participants were prompted to divert attention away from their feelings while making judgements, and in each study this distraction strategy resulted in reduced bias in judgement relative to control conditions. The findings provide evidence that distraction can improve choice across several situations that typically elicit robustly biased responses, even though participants are not aware of the effectiveness of this strategy.

Boredom as a seeking state: Boredom prompts the pursuit of novel (even negative) experiences.

Building on functional models of emotion, we propose that boredom creates a seeking state that prompts people to explore new experiences, even if those experiences are hedonically negative. Specifically, as emotional responses fade, boredom motivates the pursuit of alternative experiences that differ from the experience that resulted in boredom. Participants who reported a higher degree of boredom after a neutral task were more likely to choose negative experiences (Study 1). Compared with a low-boredom condition, participants in a high-boredom condition desired novel experiences and, as a result of this desire, were more likely to choose novel negative experiences (Study 2). In Study 3, participants were made bored by positive or negative stimuli. Participants in the positive-boredom conditions were more likely to choose a novel experience that was more negative; participants in the negative-boredom conditions were more likely to choose a novel experience that was more positive. These findings reveal that boredom motivates people to seek out novel experiences that elicit different (even more negative) feelings.

Method of induction could affect emotional outcomes: comment on markey, chin, vanepps, and loewenstein (2014 ).

Markey, Chin, Vanepps, and Loewenstein (2014) demonstrated six methods for the induction of boredom. However, a clear and testable definition of boredom should be established prior to experimental manipulation of the construct. Defining boredom from a functional emotion perspective is one approach that affords a definition separable from the outcomes associated with boredom and insight into which manipulations may effectively target the construct.