POLITICAL-ATTITUDES - INTERACTIONS OF COGNITION AND AFFECT

Commonly held political opinions provide an ecologically relevant focu s for studying the interactions of environmental context, affect or em otion, and cognition. To explore this approach to information processi ng, John T. Lanzetta helped initiate a series of experiments examining how emotional responses to politicians' nonverbal displays influence changes in attitude toward these leaders. Although this line of resear ch has revealed how a number of variables interact when humans respond to known individuals in meaningful situations, the precise relationsh ip between mood state or affect prior to a stimulus and subsequent emo tions and cognitions remains unclear Based on recent theories of modul ar brain function, an experimental paradigm was designed to test the h ypothesis that the effects of a mood state on information processing d epend on the subject's awareness of the affect as well as on its valen ce. Preliminary data from such a study, in which preconscious images o f emotionally evocative stimuli were used to induce positive or negati ve affect prior to viewing the leader suggests that the induction of n egative affective states can lead to more positive attitudes. Reflecte d in such public opinion phenomena as the ''rally-round-the-flag'' eff ect this mood-incongruent attitude change challenges many traditional theories of emotion and cognition.