Affect as a motivational state

Abstract

Using Brehm's (1999) intensity of emotion paradigm, we investigated whether basic positive or negative affect operates like a motivational state. We focused on one of the most basic affects, the sensory affect experienced when eating food. Participants tasted a delicious chocolate truffle (Study 1) or some bitter chocolate (Study 2) and were exposed to either a weak, moderately strong, or a very strong reason for feeling an opposing-valence affect or to no reason. In line with the predictions, the affect that participants reported in response to chocolate functioned like a motivational state as its intensity was a cubic function of the importance of the reason for feeling an opposing affect. We discussed the implications of these findings for the conceptualisation of affect and consider several applications for food advertising and consumer rating research.

Keywords:

• Positive and negative affect
• Basic affect
• Motivation
• The intensity of emotion theory
• Deterrence
• Feeling
• Pleasure
• Appetite

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Riverfront Chocolates, Lawrence, KS, for providing truffles and wafers of unsweetened chocolate at a discount. The second experiment was ably carried out by Megan Wingerter and Laurence Cooley.