Switching from approach to withdrawal is easier than vice versa

Abstract

A fundamental property of emotional responses is a change in action tendencies that allow the individual to cope with the situation. Most basically, there are two types of behaviour one can switch to when responding emotionally: approach or withdrawal. The present study examined whether the ability to switch to approach or withdrawal depends on the type of behaviour shown before. Using familiar (Experiment 1) and unfamiliar (Experiment 2) neutral stimuli, we first show that switching from approach to withdrawal is generally easier than vice versa. In Experiment 3, we demonstrate that this holds true even when participants respond to emotional stimuli that typically elicit strong approach or withdrawal tendencies. These results indicate that there is a fundamental asymmetry in the ability to switch from approach to withdrawal or vice versa. As shown in Experiment 3, this asymmetry may represent a serious confound in many previous studies examining the link between stimulus valence and associated action tendencies, suggesting that the link between positive stimuli and approach tendencies may be stronger, and the link between negative stimuli and withdrawal tendencies weaker, than previously believed.

Keywords:

• Approach
• Avoidance
• Task switching
• Motivation
• Emotional valence

Notes

¹ In all of the experiments, we report all data exclusions, all manipulations and all measures.

² Including these participants did not change the significance of any of our results.

³ To account for repeated measures, all reported effect sizes were calculated using Morris and DeShon's (2002) equation 8.

⁴ Including these participants did not change the significance of any of our results.

⁵ The IAPS slide numbers were as follows: positive: 1440, 1463, 1610, 1710, 1999, 2070, 2311, 2352; threatening: 1120, 1205, 1300, 1302, 2120, 6260, 6370, 6510.

⁶ Including these participants did not change the significance of any of our results.