Higher motivation - greater control? The effect of arousal on judgement

Abstract

This research examines control over the effect of arousal, a dimension of affect, on judgement. Past research shows that high processing motivation enhances control over the effects of affect on judgement. Isolating and studying arousal as opposed to valence, the other dimension of affect, and its effect on judgement, we identify boundary conditions for past findings. Drawing from the literature on processes by which arousal influences judgement, we demonstrate that the role of motivation is contingent upon the type of judgement task (i.e., memory- versus stimulus-based judgement). In stimulus-based judgement, individuals exert greater control over the effect of arousal on judgement under low compared to high motivation. In contrast, in memory-based judgement individuals exert greater control over the effect of arousal under high compared to low motivation. Theoretical implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Affect
• Arousal
• Automatic processes
• Controlled processes

Acknowledgments

Part of the research was performed for a Ph.D. dissertation of the first author at the University of Illinois, and was funded by the J. M. Jones Chair and the Sheth Fund at the University of Illinois. The authors thank Kent Monroe, and the dissertation committee: Thom Srull, Tiffany White, and Cele Otnes for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹We ran another study, which had a 2 (Arousal)×2 (Motivation) between-subjects design. This additional study produced a similar, but insignificant, effect. Although the two-way interaction between Arousal and Motivation was not significant, F(1, 233)=2.383, p=.124, the simple effects were consistent with our hypothesis. Arousal had a marginally significant effect on attitude toward the brand under high motivation (M _{low arousal}=21.47, M _{high arousal}=19.93), F(1, 233)=3.72, p=.055, but not under low motivation, F(1, 233)=0.05, p=.817.

²Planned comparisons are appropriate for examining the directional hypotheses 2a and 2b (see Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1995, p. 4). We note, however, that the three-way interaction of the overall experimental design (between arousal, motivation, and forewarning) was not significant, F(1, 170)=2.115, p=.148.

³Stimulus-based judgement should be distinguished from on-line judgement (i.e., judgement formation when no information or judgement has been previously encoded vs. updating previously-formed judgement, respectively; Hastie & Park, 1986), and also between memory-based judgement and judgement retrieval. In memory-based judgement, individuals first encode information without making any judgement, and, when applicable, retrieve the previously-encoded information and compute their judgement. In judgement retrieval (also known as direct access), individuals have previously-formed judgements encoded in their memory, and, when applicable, retrieve these judgements (Hastie & Park, 1986). Studies have shown that affect does not influence judgement in judgement-retrieval situations (Forgas, 1995; Srull, 1983, 1984). Thus, we focus here on memory- compared to stimulus-based judgement.

⁴Note that in the context of memory-based judgement, we focus on the effect of arousal experienced during judgement and not during encoding of the information, which is a distinct case, and is beyond the scope of this paper.