THE PRIMACY DEBATE

Which comes first – cognition or emotion? This is the primacy debate Abelson (1963), Simon (1967) – little attention paid to interaction of cognition with emotion

Herb Simon's "hot cognition“ (People) "… attend to issues longer, to think harder about them, to receive deeper impressions that last longer, if information is presented in the context of emotion - a sort of hot dressing - than if it is presented wholly without effect" (Simon, 1983, p.32)

“Hot” cognition – thinking under high arousal “Cold” cognition – thinking under low arousal

EMOTION BEFORE COGNITION Zajonc holds that: Emotional reactions occur independently of cognition Emotion can precede cognition But! What is really meant by “emotion”? What is really meant by “cognition”?

Zajonc (1980) used the “mere exposure effect” to show that cognition and emotion are independent systems Emotion information processing system that is biologically separate from conscious processes

Murphy and Zajonc (1993): two independent groups of participants One group received “sub-optimal exposure duration” (4 ms), the other received “optimal exposure duration” priming

They were shown facial expressions of happiness and anger (facial “primes”) and then shown Chinese ideograms, which they rated for likeability If there is a distinct appraisal mechanism that unconsciously appraises the stimuli, the suboptimal stimuli should have an influence upon the way the participants reacted to the ideograms

When the ideograms were preceded by happy smiling faces, the ideograms were rated significantly more favourably (than when compared to negative primes) “…why is it that the identical affective information seems more potent when presented at a level that is not accessible to consciousness?” (p.726)

Zajonc interpreted this as meaning that “emotion can be present” without the conscious registering of an object Does this mean that recognition is not a prerequisite to emotion? There was no such effect with the optimally presented faces

According to Clore, Gasper and Garvin (2001), if people are consciously aware of emotionally-relevant events or stimuli, then they have a weaker impact Are they separate systems? But many “cognitions” also take place under our awareness levels!

Just because one is not consciously aware of a cognitive process, does not mean that cognition has nothing to do with emotion, not least that it precedes it Mandler (1980) – two processes involved in making such judgements: –an appeal to perceptual fluency –directed memory search

Consider also Dimberg and Oehman (1996) who used a similar method and saw that suboptimally presented facial expressions led participants to smile or frown in accordance with the prime So, does this indicate that there is a “primary appraisal process” (Oatley et al, 2006, p. 171) that signals whether something is positive or negative, automatically and very quickly?

Rozin and Royzman (2001) saw that negative evaluations are stronger Similarly, Ito et al (1998) saw that when participants are shown positive or negative photographs (e.g. lovely meal versus dead animal), brain activity in area involved in evaluation is greater for negative photographs.

De Houwer and Eelen (1998) also found support for affective primacy: Participants had to determine whether a word was a noun or an adjective by stating "positive" or "negative“

Crucially, they were told to ignore the meaning of the words They took significantly longer to declare whether a word was a noun or an adjective when the word itself was affectively discrepant with their response than to affectively congruent ones

In other words, saying “positive” in response to a word with a negative meaning took longer than saying “positive” to a word with a positive meaning Evidence for automatic affectivity?

COGNITION BEFORE EMOTION Primacy of Cognition (Lazarus, 1984; Storbeck, 2006) Lazarus holds that cognitive appraisal is a precondition for emotion Meaning needs to be extracted from information processing therefore an appraisal or evaluation of the information is required

Cognitive primacy hypothesis: –Ontological information activated first

Nummenmaa et al’s (2010) six experiments Participants shown visual scenes Decisions about the ontological groupings of the content faster than judgments about pleasantness/emotional content Support for cognitive primacy

Subliminal perception studies (Lazarus, 1951, 1984, 1991) (“subception”) Lazarus and McCleary (1951): –Supraliminal pairing of letter strings and electric shock Then – –Subliminal pairing of letter strings and electric shock

Participants became classically conditioned to react (galvanic skin response) even in subliminal perception condition Claim: emotional significance registered w/out conscious awareness

Symbolic perception required in the first instance (N.B. compare usefulness of ANS response here with verbal report method)

Lazarus accepts notion of unconscious appraisal Is “affect” the same as emotion? Is “preference” the same as emotion? Does it indicate emotion?

Discrete versus dimensional approaches to appraisal Lazarus’ approach is a discrete approach Ellsworth (1991) introduced dimensional approach Discrete approach emphasizes differences between emotions, when, in fact, there are similarities

Ellsworth says that discrete approach to emotional appraisal does not explain how people move/change from one emotion to another Ellsworth and Smith (1988) developed eight “dimensions of meaning” which describe the appraisal processes behind various emotions

Adapted from Smith and Ellsworth (1985) 1AttentionDegree to which you focus on and think about the stimulus 2CertaintyDegree to which you are certain about what is going to happen 3Control-copingExtent to which you have control over outcomes 4PleasantnessDegree that the event is positive or negative 5Perceived obstacleExtent to which the pursuit of your goals is blocked 6ResponsibilityExtent to which other people, you, and situational factors are responsible for events 7LegitimacyExtent to which the event is fair and deserved 8Anticipated effortExtent to which you must expend energy to respond to the event

Smith and Ellsworth asked participants to think about experiencing a variety of emotions They then rated each emotional experience according to the eight dimensions It was found that each emotion has a clear appraisal pattern

Example: happiness is pleasant, has low effort, high certainty and high attention Similarly, Smith and Lazarus (1993) went on to specify six subcomponents of appraisal as follows

Accountability Motivational relevance Motivational congruence Problem-focused coping Emotion-focused coping Future expectancy

They also saw that different emotions drew upon different appraisal pathways

The Intermediate Position Teasdale and Fogarty (1979) Reciprocity Some thoughts may change mood states These mood states may then influence cognition

The LeDoux Resolution Dual routes – some emotional reactions involve conscious thought, some do not Fiedler (1983) criticism: he says that Zajonc’s “cognition independent” emotions really refer to unconscious processes. When he uses the term “cognition”, he means conscious thought Lazarus’ use of ‘cognitive’ is much wider

Resolution of the primacy debate Leventhal and Scherer (1987) claim it is a semantic debate; the real issue is the level of processing So, narrow or wide definitions of cognition?

Leventhal and Scherer stated that it is more important to ascertain what type of information needs to be in place and the nature of the neurological processing needed They say that appraisal of an event as being relevant or irrelevant to an individual’s goals is the prerequisite for an emotion

LeDoux’s Position “If cognition is defined broadly as information processing, then emotion must be dependent upon cognition” (LeDoux, 1993, p. 62) LeDoux (1989) distinguishes affective and cognitive processing, saying that cognitive processing serves to elaborate or develop input and leads to further processing He claims that emotional/affective computation serves to evaluate the significance of the input

LeDoux (2004) points out the following: The brain can know whether a stimulus is good or bad before recognising it (i.e. emotional significance can be appraised very early)

Perceptual representation of a stimulus and the appraisal/evaluation of what it means for the individual are processed separately LeDoux cites cases where brain damage leads to inability to evaluate object, but nevertheless perceive it

He welcomed Zajonc’s work, but did nevertheless point out: “the absence of conscious recognition is not, strictly speaking, a useful basis for exclusion of cognition from emotional processing” (2004, p.54)

Recent research investigated the interaction of cognitive and emotional processing (Frischen et al, 2008; Huang et al, 2011) Lai et al (2012) argue that one does not always precede the other Context and stimulus determine the primacy Call for research into what causes cognitive primacy in some circumstances and affective primacy in others

Murphy, S. T. (2000). Feeling without thinking: Affective Primacy and the Nonconscious Processing of Emotion, In J. Bargh and D. Apsley (Eds.), Unraveling the complexities of social life (pp.39-53). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Zajonc, R. (1980). “Feeling and thinking. Preferences need no inferences”, American Psychologist (1980) Lazarus, R. (1982). “Thoughts on the relations between emotion and cognition”, American Psychologist.