Affective Influences on Attitudes and Judgments

Abstract Writers, artists, and laypersons have always been fascinated by the subtle influence of feelings on attitudes and behavior. This question has also occupied the minds of such classic philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Descartes, Pascal, Kant, and others. Many of these theorists saw affect as a potentially dangerous, invasive force that tends to subvert rational judgment and attitudes, an idea that was to reemerge in Freud’s psychodynamic theories early this century. However, during the past few decades important advances in neuroanatomy, psychophysiology, and social cognition research produced a radically different view. Rather than viewing affect as a dangerous and disruptive influence on our attitudes and judgments, recent evidence suggests that affect is often a useful and even essential component of adaptive responding to social situations (Adolphs & Damasio, 2001; Damasio, 1994; Ito & Cacioppo, 2001). The research I review here shows that affective states have a powerful influence on the way we perceive and respond to social situations. Most of the time these influences are adaptive and helpful in guiding attitudes and judgments (Clore, Schwarz, & Conway, 1994; Forgas, 1995a, 2000; Zajonc, 2000). The past two decades saw something like an “affective revolution” in psychological research. Indeed, one could argue that most of what is known about the influence of affect on attitudes and judgments has been discovered since the early 1980s. One of the key objectives of contemporary research and of this chapter in particular is to explore how, when, and why affective states will influence attitudes and judgments. In a broader sense, my aim is thus to make a contribution to the age-old quest to understand the relationship between the rational and the emotional aspects of human nature (Hilgard, 1980; see also chapter 31, this volume). Affect has a particularly important influence on people’s attitudes and judgments, two constructs that most directly touch on how we respond to social stimuli. The concept of attitudes has long been considered as one of the “most distinctive and indispensable” concepts in social psychology (Allport, 1954, p. 43), and its importance to understanding human social behavior remains undiminished to this day (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Terms such as attitude and judgment appear to be closely related, in the sense that judgments involve the on-line, immediate, and dynamic evaluation of social stimuli, whereas attitude refers to more enduring, stable, and crystallized responses to the social world. Most attitudes have their origin in social judgments, and social judgments in turn are frequently influenced by preexisting attitudes.