This article was downloaded by: [Georgetown University] On: 29 April 2013, At: 00:32 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Cognition & Emotion Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pcem20 Affect intensity and processing fluency of deterrents Andrei Holman a a Psychology Department, “Alexandru I. Cuza” University, Iaşi, Romania Version of record first published: 24 Apr 2013. To cite this article: Andrei Holman (2013): Affect intensity and processing fluency of deterrents, Cognition & Emotion, DOI:10.1080/02699931.2013.785386 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.785386 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
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This article was downloaded by: [Georgetown University]On: 29 April 2013, At: 00:32Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Cognition & EmotionPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pcem20
Affect intensity and processing fluency ofdeterrentsAndrei Holman aa Psychology Department, “Alexandru I. Cuza” University, Iaşi, RomaniaVersion of record first published: 24 Apr 2013.
To cite this article: Andrei Holman (2013): Affect intensity and processing fluency of deterrents, Cognition &Emotion, DOI:10.1080/02699931.2013.785386
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.785386
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that thecontents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae,and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall notbe liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of thismaterial.
Affect intensity and processing fluency of deterrents
Andrei Holman
Psychology Department, ‘‘Alexandru I. Cuza’’ University, Iasi, Romania
The theory of emotional intensity (Brehm, 1999) suggests that the intensity of affective statesdepends on the magnitude of their current deterrents. Our study investigated the role that fluency*the subjective experience of ease of information processing*plays in the emotional intensitymodulations as reactions to deterrents. Following an induction phase of good mood, we manipulatedboth the magnitude of deterrents (using sets of photographs with pre-tested potential to instigate anemotion incompatible with the pre-existent affective state*pity) and their processing fluency(normal vs. enhanced through subliminal priming). Current affective state and perception ofdeterrents were then measured. In the normal processing conditions, the results revealed the cubiceffect predicted by the emotional intensity theory, with the initial affective state being replaced by theone appropriate to the deterrent only in participants exposed to the high magnitude deterrence. Inthe enhanced fluency conditions the emotional intensity pattern was drastically altered; also, thereplacement of the initial affective state occurred at a lower level of deterrence magnitude (moderateinstead of high), suggesting the strengthening of deterrence emotional impact by enhanced fluency.
Brehm (1999) developed a theoretical account*the theory of emotional intensity*specificallyaimed at explaining the variations of affectivestates intensity as reactions to the context.Suggesting a functional analogy between affectiveand motivational phenomena, Brehm (1999)proposed that emotional intensity varies as a cubicfunction of deterrents. According to the theory,any event which, in that particular context,represents a reason for the individual not to feelthe emotional state he is currently experiencing is
conceived as a deterrent for the respective state.More precisely, deterrents are factors whichinterfere with the subjective experiencing or withthe behavioural manifestation of a previouslyinstigated emotion. In the typical experimentalscenario, an affective state is first induced; the setof affective states which have been shown tomanifest intensity variations in line with thetheory includes happiness (good mood), sadness,sympathy, anger, as well as sensory affect. Second,participants in the experimental groups are
Correspondence should be addressed to: Andrei Holman, ‘‘Alexandru I. Cuza’’ University, Psychology Department,
exposed to a deterrent of variable magnitude, eithersmall, moderate or strong; lastly, the participants’current affective state is investigated. As theexperimental evidence relevant to the theory hasshown, reasons for feeling a different emotion thanthe previously instigated one affect the intensity ofthe latter: receiving a gift certificate is a deterrentfor the current state of sadness (Brehm, Brummett,& Harvey, 1999) and anger (Miron, Brummett,Ruggles, & Brehm, 2008), while news of futurecollege tuition rises deter positive affect (Brehm,1999). Moreover, deterrents are not necessarilyevents calling for an opposite emotion to the onecurrently experienced, but merely stimuli compet-ing for attention with it and, consequently, inter-fering with its function. Thus, the concept ofdeterrence is not confined to emotional opposites,but includes all events which are incompatible withthe current affect, an idea supported by resultsshowing that affective states can be also deterred bynon-emotional factors in the same manner as byemotional ones. For example, the sadness insti-gated by listening to a sad story recorded on tape isdeterred by the background noise on the recording(Silvia & Brehm, 2001).
The general effect of deterrents on the affectivestate that had been instigated before dependson their magnitude. Across the various groupsdefined by deterrence magnitude, the theorypredicts a cubic trend. First, in the absence ofany contextual deterrents, the intensity of anexisting emotion is at its highest level, as inducedby its instigating event; thus, affective statesmonopolise the organism’s resources in order tocope with the instigating event. In the presence ofa minor deterrent, it drops to a low level; but thisdrop does not reflect a shift in priorities from thefirst emotional event to the current one, resultingin emotional dissipation. Instead, this intensitylowering is the manner in which the organismrationalises its resources while still focusing onachieving the goal of the previously instigatedemotion. When confronted with small impedi-ments, this focus can be kept even with a lowinvestment of psychological resources, whichtranslates into a low emotional intensity. Thus,the principle in dealing with deterrents, as stated
by this theory, is that up to a level of deterrencemagnitude the initial emotion becomes as intenseas necessary in order to maintain behaviouralcontrol. This creates a particular relationshipbetween deterrence magnitude and the subsequentemotional intensity, which might seem somewhatparadoxical or at least very different from thecommon sense expectations on these phenomena:the stronger the reasons for not feeling anemotion, the more intense that emotion willbecome. In other words, the results so far haveshown that the initial affective state intensifies asthe deterrent gains in strength. In the typicalexperimental design described above, this rela-tionship is captured by the comparison betweenthe emotional intensities reported by the partici-pants in the small deterrence and moderatedeterrence conditions, with the latter experiencingthe initial affective state with higher intensitythan the former. For instance, in the Brehm et al.(1999) study, following the induction of sadnessand the exposure to deterrents in form of the giftcertificates received, the participants given a $2gift certificate became sadder than those whoreceived a $1 gift certificate. This direct propor-tionality between the two exists up to a certainpoint where the magnitude of deterrence over-comes the importance of the event that instigatedthe initial affect. When encountering a deterrentstronger than the instigating event, the initialemotion dissipates, being replaced by the affectivestate induced by the deterrent (in the case ofemotional deterrents).
According to the theory, these differences inemotional intensity represent ways in which theemotional system rationalises the use of resourceswhen dealing with deterrents of various magni-tudes. Apart from this functional account, thetheory contains few references to other psycholo-gical dynamics involved in this permanent adapta-tion of affective states to the context. Specifically,whether these emotional changes imply somecorrespondent variations in the way deterrentsare apprehended by the individual remains anopen question. The cognitive consequences ofaffective states are invoked in the initial formula-tion of the theory (Brehm, 1999) only as tools
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employed by the emotional system in order toattain its goal, without any further conceptualisa-tion on the topic. Nevertheless, in light of thevarious cognitive consequences of emotions whichhave been documented, a hypothesis concerning acognitive dimension of these paradoxical affectivedynamics seems legitimate.
Among such potential cognitive mediatorsmight be included the selective attention toemotional-consistent information (Forgas &Bower, 1987) or the judgement effects of affectivestates documented in the affect-as-informationapproach (Schwarz & Clore, 2007). These directconsequences of pre-existing affect on the proces-sing of the stimuli which, according to the theory,function as deterrents can also be inferred fromthe results of recent studies (Brehm, Miron, &Miller, 2009; Miron, Parkinson, & Brehm, 2007),which found that participants’ evaluations ofdeterrents were related to the intensity of thepre-existent affective state. For instance, in theBrehm et al. (2009) study, after the instigation ofpositive affect, participants being told about an8% tuition increase (the moderate deterrent)evaluated this information as having the samenegative personal impact as those learning of a2% increase (the low deterrent). Thus, the currentaffective state prevents significant variations in theevaluation of psychologically incompatible events.Only when the magnitude of these deterrentsovercomes the threshold set by the importance ofthe emotional event does their evaluation becomesmore attuned to it: for example, in the above-mentioned study, participants told about a 16%tuition increase gave significantly worse evaluationof this information than the other two groups.Although they were not conceptualised as directprocessing effects in the studies reporting them,such evaluative variations can be considered, atleast in part, as reflecting cognitive means throughwhich emotional states resist deterrence, morespecifically as judgement effects of the currentemotion: the more intense positive affect in the‘‘moderate deterrence’’ condition diminishes thesubjective impact of the negative deterrent tothe same level as that reported by the participants
in the ‘‘low deterrence’’ condition, who areexperiencing lower intensities of positive affect.
These effects could be also facilitated byanother cognitive mechanism involved in theresistance of affect when confronted with deter-rents, namely the limitations in cognitive proces-sing of deterrents as a result of their low currentsubjective relevance. In order to withhold thepotential affective impact of any encounteredevent, its initial cognitive processing could belimited to the rapid general assessment of itscorrespondence to the goals of the current emo-tional state and, in case of those incompatible withthe current emotional goals, of their magnitude.When the latter does not exceed the importanceof the affect instigating event, since the actualcontent of the deterrent doesn’t fit the individual’scurrent motivational focus, it becomes, from thesubjective standpoint, less relevant in that parti-cular context. As a result, it is shifted out of thecurrent attentional focus, the mental investmentin its processing being limited, while the cognitivesystem concentrates on the elements that concurto the function of the affective state.
The present study was built upon this pre-supposition of a specific motivationally*inducedcognitive approach on deterrents, functioning as amechanism through which affective states resistthem: the imposition of a mental set whichrenders them as having lower current subjectiverelevance, consequently receiving a more super-ficial cognitive treatment. Further, we assumedthat one specific cognitive phenomenon*proces-sing fluency*might alleviate this effect anddiminish the emotional resistance to deterrents.
Processing fluency refers to the subjectiveexperience of ease or difficulty generated duringmental tasks, and it represents one of the mostimportant metacognitive cues used in reasoning(Oppenheimer, 2008). While many varieties offluency have been documented, which influen-cing a variety of psychological aspects (Alter &Oppenheimer, 2009), the present study focusedon perceptual fluency (e.g., Reber & Schwarz,1999), referring to the ease of stimulus processingin identifying its physical identity and form.Perceptual fluency can be manipulated, among
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others, through figure�ground contrast, presenta-tion duration, priming (Reber, Winkielman, &Schwarz, 1998) previous exposure (Jacoby, 1983)or font legibility (Oppenheimer, 2006).
According to the discrepancy-attribution hy-pothesis (Whittlesea & Williams, 1998), fluencyis further interpreted as familiarity only when theexperienced ease of processing exceeds the oneexpected in the given situation. Furthermore,two theoretical accounts have been developed todeal with this issue of fluency interpretation.The hedonic marking theory (Winkielman &Cacioppo, 2001) draws upon a series of experi-mental results indicating that fluency by itselfgenerates genuine positive affect and directlyfacilitates positive evaluations. The opposite,‘‘cold’’ account suggests two steps of fluencyinterpretation: first, fluency is elicited as a neutral,non-specific experience, then is interpreted byattributing it to the source deemed as appropriate.It becomes a cue for the relevant judgements athand (Unkelbach, 2006), with various influencesdepending on its perceived validity, on individual’snaıve theories (Winkielman & Schwarz, 2001).When not discounted by its attribution to analternative source, it can inform the individual onvarious characteristics of the stimulus (truth,valence, fame, etc.), being capable of shiftingjudgements towards both ends of the dimensionapprehended, both in non-evaluative judge-ments (for instance, brightness vs. darkness, asin Mandler, Nakamura, & Van Zandt, 1987) aswell as in evaluative ones (positive vs. negative,as in Reber et al., 1998).
Some of the consequences of fluency onsubsequent information processing are particularlyrelevant in the context of the motivationallymediated dynamics of emotional intensity. Thegeneral link between motivation and processingfluency has been highlighted by previous resultsshowing that messages matching the individual’smotivational focus (prevention or promotion) areprocessed more fluently (Lee & Aaker, 2004).Other results suggest that the two might also havecombined effects, as fluency might influencethe subjective relevance of the currently pro-cessed items and, consequently, their role in the
individual’s motivated cognitive processing. First,studies indicate a general enhancing effect offluency on the perceived importance of therespective information, for instance in terms ofeconomic value or purchasing power (Alter &Oppenheimer, 2008) or objective importance(Labroo, Lambotte, & Zhang, 2009). Moreover,this importance-enhancement effect is not limitedto the mere evaluation of the fluently processedstimulus, but it also extends into the individual’sfurther mental operations. In this respect, Shahand Oppenheimer (2007) showed that fluencyincreases the impact of the respective piece ofinformation in judgement: people place moreweight on perceptually fluent cues in their overallevaluations of a target. These results suggest thatfluency enhances not only the intrinsic importanceof the stimulus, but also its relevance for the cur-rent cognitive task. In this perspective, in theShah and Oppenheimer (2007) experiment, thefluency-enhanced relevance led to participants’stronger reliance on the respective piece of infor-mation in their overall judgement. Furthermore,while in this study the participants’ processinggoals were set by the experimenters*evaluating atarget, such an effect of fluency on the perceivedrelevance of information can be thought of asinfluencing any type of cognitive processing. Gen-erally, it entails the heightening of the subjectiverelevance of fluently processed items above thatexperienced in normal or disfluent processingconditions.
Turning to the affective dynamics described bythe theory of emotional intensity, their cognitiveside might involve a mechanism of lowering thedeterrents’ subjective relevance for the individual’scurrent interests and motivation. The presentstudy was built upon the following reasoning: if,indeed, pre-existing affective states have such aneffect, then any intervention that would increasethis subjective relevance might alter the affectiveintensity pattern described by the theory ofemotional intensity. As stated above, previousresults suggest that fluency heightens the sub-jective relevance of the stimuli for the currentprocessing purposes. When processing elementsthat are incompatible with the previously induced
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emotion, enhanced fluency might increase theirsubjective relevance and, consequently, theamount of cognitive resources invested in them.This attentional enhancement effect, in turn,could increase the impact of these high fluencydeterrents on the current affective state. Thus, weexpected that deterrents processed with an ele-vated fluency would generate a different pattern ofemotional intensity among the various conditionsof deterrence magnitude than the one produced bynormal fluency deterrents. Also, the replacementof the former emotion with the one induced bydeterrents processed with enhanced fluency*aphenomena usually entailing the highest levelof deterrence, as studies (Brehm, 1999) haveshown*would appear even when participantsare exposed to deterrents of lower magnitude.
Overview of the present study
In order to test these predictions, we conducted anexperiment employing the research plan used inthe studies testing the theory of emotionalintensity, but with a supplementary independentvariable. First, an affective state*good mood*was instigated. Most investigations testing thetheory focused on actual emotions (anger, sadness,happiness); nevertheless, Brehm (1999) arguedthat since the core aspect under scrutiny is theintensity of affective states, ‘‘no distinctions appearto be necessary’’ (Brehm, 1999, p. 8) amongemotion, affect and mood. The main reason forthis equivalence is that all feeling states share thesame function of controlling the behaviour, and inorder to achieve this purpose they modulate theirintensity as reaction to the other events that occurafter their instigation. This is the feature whichthe theory is focused on; thus, beyond thespecificities of mood when compared to the otheraffective states, this common dimension ofintensity raises the possibility that mood fluctua-tions when confronting deterrents of variousmagnitudes respect the same pattern as thatobserved in the case of emotions. Furthermore,previous studies (Miron et al., 2007) testedthe theory on other feeling states distinct fromemotions (basic positive and negative affect),
showing that they also behave in a motivationalmanner, modulating their intensity as a cubicfunction of the interference factors.
Second, participants were exposed to nofurther treatment, or to low, moderate or strongdeterrents, namely potential instigators of anotheraffective state*pity. In terms of the theory ofemotional intensity, such instigators are expectedto function as deterrents because they call for adistinct affective state from the one previouslyinstigated. Hence, pity is not conceived here asopposed to good mood, but merely as incompa-tible with it, especially from the standpoint oftheir subjective valence, as pity is qualitativelycloser to the negative hedonic end. This differencein subjective quality leads to incompatibility, tomutual exclusiveness, since they cannot be experi-enced simultaneously (Brehm & Miron, 2006).
The supplementary independent variable wasthe processing fluency of these deterrents, half ofthe participants being exposed to deterrentsprocessed with enhanced fluency, while the othersperceived deterrents with normal, unaltered flu-ency. In this last group we expected that theintensity of good mood would be the same cubicfunction of the deterrent conditions as in theprevious studies on the topic (Brehm, 1999),showing a decrease from the no deterrence condi-tion to the low deterrence, an increase from low tomoderate and another decrease from moderate tothe strong deterrent condition. However, in thehigh perceptual fluency conditions, we expectedthat this pattern would drastically change, indicat-ing a stronger impact of the deterrents processedwith enhanced fluency, leading to the dissipationof the initial affective state (its sharp decrease inintensity) even when their magnitude was low.Thus, we predicted that the affective state woulddrop to a low level from the no deterrence tothe weak deterrence conditions, without anyfurther significant change across the other twoconditions*of moderate and strong deterrents,respectively.
In line with other investigations on the topic(Brehm et al., 2009), we also investigated parti-cipants’ evaluation of deterrents, expecting themto be related to the current affective state, thus
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revealing a direct effect of emotional experienceon their appraisal.
METHOD
The study was an incomplete between subjectsdesign, with deterrence (none*‘‘instigationonly’’ condition/low/moderate/strong) and fluency(normal/enhanced) as the independent variables.Participants in the ‘‘instigation only’’ conditionfunctioned as a control measure both for the groupswith normal processing fluency of deterrents andfor those with enhanced fluency. We examinedthe main and interaction effects of deterrenceand fluency on affective state and perceptions ofdeterrents.
Participants
One hundred sixty-seven psychology undergrad-uates participated in this study (105 females and62 males); they received course credit for theirparticipation. The gender distribution acrossexperimental conditions was balanced.
Materials
Instigation of positive mood. Positive mood waselicited using classical music; participants listenedto a five-minute recording of the first movement(Allegro) of ‘‘‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’’’ byMozart; this musical material has been previouslyvalidated as a positive mood inductor (Harkness,Jacobson, Duong, & Sabbagh, 2010). In order toincrease the affect-infusion of the music, theywere also required to sketch on a piece of paperwhatever the music inspired them to draw.
Manipulation of deterrence. We intended todeter positive mood using an opposite affectivestate, namely pity, which was instigated usingphotographs of old Caucasian males. There was asingle protagonist facing the camera in eachphoto. The details that we expected to inducepity in our young participants were not only theage of the protagonists, but also their sad facialexpressions, their bent posture and rounded
shoulders, emanating*with various intensities*a sense of loneliness and sorrow. The pictureswere edited so that their protagonists*depictedfrom the waist up*would occupy approximatelythe same proportion in each of them (around70%), thus being at the same distance from thecamera across them. Also, the backgrounds ineach photograph were blurred.
Photographs were selected in a pilot study, inwhich participants (N�31) were exposed to 25such photographs and provided, for each, anassessment of its protagonist on three character-istics related to the emotion of pity: sad, pitifuland weak, on 11-point scales (from 0�Not at allto 10�Extremely). The mean score on these threecriteria was used as an operationalisation of pity-induction potential of each photograph. On itsbasis, we divided the photographs into threegroups: weak pity-induction potential (includingthe photographs with a mean score around 2),moderate potential (mean score around 5) andstrong (mean score around 8). Then, the threephotographs with the lowest standard deviationfrom each group were selected in order to beused in the experiment. The emotion-instigationeffects of these three sets were tested in the secondphase of the pilot study, in which participants(N�63) were divided in three groups. Eachgroup was exposed for 4 s to each photograph inone of the sets, presented sequentially, then ratedon 11-point scales the intensity of their currentgood and bad mood, anger, fear, frustration,tension, pep, disgust, surprise, and pity. In eachgroup, the mean scores of the intensity of pitywere close to the ones in the first phase of thepilot study (presented above). Also, bad moodshowed the same pattern of intensity increasefrom the null pity-induction potential set to thestrong potential set.
Manipulation of fluency. Before each targetpicture, participants in the enhanced fluencyconditions were exposed to a prime consisting ofa degraded visual contour of the protagonist of thephotograph, a perceptual fluency-enhancing tech-nique used in previous studies (e.g., Reber et al.,1998).
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Dependent measures
Affect. Emotional intensity was measured byasking participants to indicate the extent to whichthey currently felt anger, bad mood, fear, goodmood, frustration, tension, pep, disgust, surprise,and pity, on 11-point scales (from 0�Not at all to10�Extremely).
Perception of the deterrents. Participants in thedeterrence conditions were asked to give theirimpression of the people in the three photographswhich they had previously seen, by rating them onthe same set of personal characteristics as the oneemployed in the pilot study: sad, pitiful and weak.We employed this global measure, administeredafter participants filled in the affect scales*instead of one concerning each of the three pho-tographs, administered immediately after viewingeach, before filling in the affect scales*in order toavoid the contamination which might have beeninduced in this case by the semantic content ofthese personal traits (for instance, ‘‘sad’’), which,in turn, might have influenced the affectivemeasures.
Procedure
Participants were run in blocks of six, and theywere randomly assigned to one of the experimen-tal conditions. Upon arrival, participants in thedeterrence conditions were told that they wouldparticipate in two separate studies, the first on theeffects of music on spatial representations, whichwas, in fact, the mood-induction phase, and thesecond on impression formation, while those inthe ‘‘instigation only’’ condition were only toldabout the first study. All were then required tolisten to the musical material and to use a piece ofpaper placed in front of them to sketch whateverthey feel inspired to draw. At the end of themusical material, these papers were collected, andthe participants were placed at the six computersin the room. Participants in the ‘‘instigation only’’condition received and filled out the affectquestionnaire.
For the participants in the deterrence condi-tions, the experiment continued with the secondtask*deterrence manipulation*employing acomputer-controlled procedure, using Inquisit3.0 software. The on-screen instructions at thebeginning explained to them that this next part ofthe study concerned the way people form theirimpressions about others, and that they would seea series of photographs. Participants in each of thethree conditions of deterrence were exposed to thecorrespondent set of photographs, as defined bytheir pity-induction potential (weak potential*‘‘low deterrence’’ condition, moderate and strong).The photos were approximately 20�20 cm insize, shown on 17-inch monitors, and each waspresented for 4 s. Immediately before each photo,participants in the enhanced fluency conditionswere also exposed to its contour prime, presentedfor 25 ms. There was a 4 s pause between thethree photos. At the end, the on-screen instruc-tions required them to open the two envelopesplaced next to the computer in order (theenvelopes were labelled 1 and 2) and fill out thequestionnaires inside. The first enveloped con-tained the affect measures, and the second con-tained the perception of the deterrents measure.Once all the participants in the block finished,they were collectively debriefed and thanked fortheir participation.
RESULTS
Good mood
A significant interaction effect between deterrenceand fluency was found: F(2, 160)�40.40, pB.01.The interaction was explored first by polynomialcontrasts using a pooled error term in each of thetwo conditions defined by fluency (normal andenhanced), in order to determine if the intensityof good mood in the four groups of deterrencefollowed the cubic effect predicted by the emo-tional intensity theory. This statistical analysisallows the testing of the two shifts in the curvatureof emotional intensity among the four groups,created by its increase from low to moderate
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deterrence, respectively the decrease from moder-ate to high deterrence.
In the normal fluency condition, the one-wayanalysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a signifi-cant cubic effect, F(1, 95)�46.01, pB.01, alldifferences in good mood being in the predicteddirection and significant. The contrasts indicatedthat good mood decreased from the ‘‘instigationonly’’ condition (M�5.96; SD�1.34) to the lowdeterrence (M�3.64; SD�0.81), t(95)�8.58,pB.01, increased from the low to the moderate(M�4.41; SD�0.88), t(95)�2.84, pB.01, anddecreased from moderate to high deterrence (M�2.44; SD�0.96), t(95)�7.24, pB.01.
In the enhanced fluency condition, the one-way ANOVA also revealed a significant cubiceffect, F(1, 89)�27.50, pB.01, but the trend ofdifferences was different from the one in thenormal fluency condition. Here, the decrease ofgood mood from the ‘‘instigation only’’ condition(M�5.96; SD�1.34) to the low deterrence(M�5.38; SD�1.01) was not significant, t(89)�1.72, p�.08; instead, there was a significantdecrease from low to moderate deterrence (M�2.33; SD�1.44), t(89)�9.15, pB.01, while theincrease from moderate to high deterrence was notsignificant (M�2.41; SD�1.00), t(89)�0.21,p�.83.
These different trends of good mood in thetwo fluency conditions are presented in Figure 1.The comparisons between the normal and en-hanced fluency groups in the three conditions ofdeterrence revealed significant differences in thefirst two of these conditions, t(47)�6.63, pB.01,in the low deterrence group, and t(49)�6.13, pB.01, in the moderate deterrence group, while thedifference in the high deterrence condition wasnot significant, t(40)�0.09, p�.92.
Deterrence induced affect: Pity
In line with the theory of emotional intensity andwith previous results (Brehm & Miron, 2006)indicating that opposing affects do not occur atthe same time, we expected the affective stateinstigated by deterrents to increase only when thepre-existing state diminished. In the groups of
participants exposed to deterrence, a significantinteraction effect between deterrence and fluencywas found: F(2, 136)�12.17, pB.01. In thenormal fluency condition, the one-way ANOVArevealed the quadratic effect predicted by thetheory of emotional intensity to be significant:F(1, 71)�15.25, pB.01. This effect indicates asignificant curving pattern among the threedeterrence conditions, created by a sharp increasein affective intensity from the second to the lastgroup of magnitude. Indeed, the polynomialcontrasts indicated that the intensity increase ofpity from low deterrence (M�1.80; SD�1.08) tomoderate (M�2.17; SD�1.20) was not signifi-cant, t(71)�1.22, p�.22, but the increase frommoderate to high deterrence (M�4.56; SD�0.82) was significant, t(71)�8.01, pB.01. Inthe enhanced fluency condition the quadraticeffect was also significant, F(1, 65)�9.24, pB
.01, but in a different trend, showing significantincreases both from low (M�2.41; SD�0.78) tomoderate deterrence (M�4.48; SD�0.94),t(65)�8.14, pB.01, and from moderate to highdeterrence (M�5.18; SD�1.01), t(65)�2.48,p�.016.
The comparisons between the normal andenhanced fluency groups in the three conditionsof deterrence revealed significant differences in allthree conditions, t(47)�2.28, p�.027, in the low
Figure 1. The effect of deterrence on good mood in the two fluency
conditions.
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deterrence group, t(49)�7.71, pB.01, in themoderate deterrence group, and t(40)�2.17,p�.036, in the high deterrence condition.1
Perceptions of the deterrents
We present the analysis on the mean score of thethree items concerning the impression of theprotagonists depicted in the three photos, sinceall individual items show the same variations. Onthis composite measure, the interaction effectbetween deterrence and fluency was significant,F(2, 136)�7.75, pB.01. The quadratic effectwas significant in the normal fluency condition,F(1, 71)�31.11, pB.01; there was no significantvariation of impression from the low deterrenceset (M�3.52; SD�1.23) to the moderate deter-rence set (M�4.00; SD�0.89), t(71)�1.23,p�.22, while protagonists of the high deterrenceset were rated significantly higher (M�8.24;SD�1.78) on the three personal traits (weaker,more sad and pitiful) than those in the moderateset, t(71)�10.93, pB.01. In the enhanced flu-ency condition only a linear effect was significant,F(1, 65)�285.73, pB.01; ratings on the threetraits of the people depicted in the moderate set(M�5.96; SD�0.90) were significantly higherthan of those in the low deterrence set (M�3.54;SD�1.21), t(65)�7.92, pB.01; also, the in-crease in rating from moderate to high deterrence(M�9.41; SD�1.76) was significant, t(65)�10.32, pB.01. While the difference betweenparticipants exposed to the pictures in the lowdeterrence set with normal and enhanced fluencywas not significant, t(47)�0.06, p�.95, thoseexposed to the other two sets in enhancedfluency conditions gave higher ratings thannormal-fluency participants, t(49)�7.84, pB.01, in the moderate deterrence condition, andt(40)�2.37, p�.023, in the high deterrencecondition.
DISCUSSION
Although numerous studies on the interplaybetween affective and metacognitive experienceshave been carried out, the effects of processingfluency on pre-existing emotions have receivedless attention. Our study investigated the role thatfluency plays in the emotional intensity modula-tions as reactions to deterrents, and its resultsshow that this pattern is drastically altered whendeterrents are perceived with enhanced fluency. Innormal processing conditions, the cubic effect ofdeterrence magnitude as predicted by emotionalintensity theory (Brehm, 1999) was replicated,employing as deterrents potential instigators of anopposed emotion with pre-tested magnitude. Inthe enhanced fluency conditions, the intensity ofthe pre-existing affective state did not show thesame significant decrease from the ‘‘instigationonly’’ condition to the low deterrence; this resultcan be interpreted as indicating the strongermagnitude of the deterrent, induced by enhancedfluency, which, in the emotional intensity theoryaccount, required a higher intensity of thepre-existing emotion in order to resist it. Thisinterpretation of deterrence impact being strength-ened by enhanced fluency is sustained by the otherresults concerning the intensity of the initial state,namely its significant decrease when exposed tomoderate deterrents (thus, from a lower level ofmagnitude compared to the normal fluency con-dition), as well as the differences between normaland enhanced-fluency groups across the threeconditions in which participants were exposedto deterrents. Although significant, the impactof enhanced fluency proved to be lower thanexpected, since the definitive decrease or dissipa-tion of good mood only occurred when partici-pants were exposed to deterrents of moderatemagnitude, while the low magnitude ones provedto be too weak to instigate such a decrease.
1 Bad mood also showed some significant variations. In both fluency conditions, the difference between low and moderate
deterrence was not significant, but the increase from moderate to high deterrence was significant, t(71)�6.11, pB.01 in the
normal fluency condition and t(65)�3.96, pB.01 in the enhanced fluency condition. As in the case of pity, the differences
between the normal and enhanced fluency groups were all significant, with bad mood being more intense in the groups which
processed the deterrents with enhanced fluency.
AFFECT INTENSITY AND DETERRENTS FLUENCY
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This differential effect suggests that fluency canheighten the emotional impact of deterrents, butit cannot ‘‘magically’’ make them all*irrespectiveof their magnitude*influential enough to detourthe individual’s cognitive processing and, conse-quently, to dissipate his or her pre-existentaffective state.
The results concerning the affective stateplaying the part of deterrence*pity*show thatits intensity is heightened by enhanced-fluencydeterrents, supporting the idea of their heightenedemotional impact as effect of the fluency manip-ulation. Also, the results support one of the ideasderived from the theory (Brehm & Miron, 2006),that opposing emotions can not occur simulta-neously, since the intensity pattern of this deter-rence-induction affect was inversely related to theone of the pre-existing state, suggesting that asthe impact of the deterrence*induced by itsmagnitude and fluency*increased, pity tendedto replace good mood. A more or less parallelpattern emerged for the perceptions of thedeterrents, suggesting a direct effect of the currentaffective state on these subjective evaluations, butalso a significant influence of the fluency withwhich deterrents were perceived.
Our interpretation of these fluency effects isbuilt upon its consequences in terms of subjectiveexperience on the perceived fit of new informa-tion to the current individual’s interests. Weassume that high processing fluency of deterrentsincreases this subjective relevance, generating amore substantial influence on the current affectivestate through an attentional enhancement effectwhich, in turn, heightens the impact of theemotion that they instigate. One of the limitsof the study is that it doesn’t provide a directassessment of this effect; future research couldextend the in-depth analysis of these interactionsbetween affect and fluency on the consequentemotional state. Previous findings in the evalua-tive area (Sansom-Daly & Forgas, 2010) supportthe existence of such combined effects, showingthat disfluency is associated with accentuatedaffective priming effects. Moreover, future inves-tigations could also test the direct causal relation-ships between the two, such as the presumed
general cognitive mechanism hypothesised here as
responsible for the resistance of affective states
to deterrents. Specifically, future research could
assess whether their intensity modulations involve
the diminishing of the fluency that the various
deterrents are processed with and, generally,
explore the cognitive underpinnings of the phe-
nomena described by the theory of emotional
intensity.
Manuscript received 7 December 2011
Revised manuscript received 3 March 2013
Manuscript accepted 8 March 2013
First published online 23 April 2013
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