There is a fire burning in my heart: The role of causal attribution in affect transfer

Abstract

The role of causal attribution in affect transfer of primes was addressed by examining the consequences of explicit evaluation of primes within the framework of the affect misattribution procedure (AMP; Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005). We reasoned that affect transfer occurs when primed affect remains diffuse and not bound to a specific object, hence capable of freely colouring subsequent evaluations of ambiguous objects. Accordingly, we propose that when people explicitly evaluate the prime, affect is clearly bound to the prime and becomes less capable of influencing subsequent judgements. Supporting this notion, affect transfer in the AMP was observed when participants ignored the primes, thereby keeping the primed affect relatively unbound. However, this effect disappeared when participants explicitly evaluated the primes before target stimuli were presented. Implications of these findings in determining how and when affect arising from one object carries over to another is discussed.

Keywords:

• Affect transfer
• Attribution
• Affective priming
• Affect misattribution procedure
• Diffuseness/distinctness of affect

Acknowledgements

The work in this paper was financially supported by VICI-grant 453–06–002 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and a Research Fellow grant of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).