Rigoni Davide, Demanet Jelle, Sartori Giuseppe
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University Ghent, Belgium.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua Padua, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2015 Sep 1;6:1307. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01307. eCollection 2015.
The temporal relationship between our conscious intentions to act and the action itself has been widely investigated. Previous research consistently shows that the motor intention enters awareness a few 100 ms before movement onset. As research in other domains has shown that most behavior is affected by the emotional state people are in, it is remarkable that the role of emotional states on intention awareness has never been investigated. Here we tested the hypothesis that positive and negative affects have opposite effects on the temporal relationship between the conscious intention to act and the action itself. A mood induction procedure that combined guided imagery and music listening was employed to induce positive, negative, or neutral affective states. After each mood induction session, participants were asked to execute voluntary self-paced movements and to report when they formed the intention to act. Exposure to pleasant material, as compared to exposure to unpleasant material, enhanced positive affect and dampened negative affect. Importantly, in the positive affect condition participants reported their intention to act earlier in time with respect to action onset, as compared to when they were in the negative or in the neutral affect conditions. Conversely the reported time of the intention to act when participants experienced negative affect did not differ significantly from the neutral condition. These findings suggest that the temporal relationship between the conscious intention to act and the action itself is malleable to changes in affective states and may indicate that positive affect enhances intentional awareness.
我们有意识的行动意图与行动本身之间的时间关系已得到广泛研究。先前的研究一致表明,运动意图在动作开始前几百毫秒进入意识。正如其他领域的研究所表明的,大多数行为会受到人们所处情绪状态的影响,令人惊讶的是,情绪状态对意图意识的作用从未被研究过。在此,我们检验了这样一个假设:积极和消极情绪对有意识的行动意图与行动本身之间的时间关系具有相反的影响。我们采用了一种结合引导式意象和音乐聆听的情绪诱导程序来诱导积极、消极或中性的情绪状态。在每次情绪诱导环节之后,要求参与者执行自主节奏的随意动作,并报告他们形成行动意图的时间。与接触不愉快的材料相比,接触愉悦的材料增强了积极情绪并抑制了消极情绪。重要的是,与处于消极或中性情绪状态时相比,在积极情绪状态下,参与者报告他们的行动意图相对于动作开始的时间更早。相反,当参与者体验到消极情绪时,报告的行动意图时间与中性状态没有显著差异。这些发现表明,有意识的行动意图与行动本身之间的时间关系会因情绪状态的变化而改变,这可能表明积极情绪会增强意图意识。