Chen Zhang, Van Dessel Pieter
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Open Mind (Camb). 2024 Jul 19;8:898-923. doi: 10.1162/opmi_a_00151. eCollection 2024.
Executing go/no-go or approach/avoidance responses toward a stimulus can change its evaluation. To explain these effects, some theoretical accounts propose that executing these responses inherently triggers affective reactions (i.e., action execution), while others posit that the evaluative influences originate from interpreting these responses as valenced actions (i.e., action interpretation). To test the role of action execution and action interpretation in these evaluative effects, we developed a novel training task that combined both go/no-go and approach/avoidance actions orthogonally. Participants either responded or did not respond (i.e., go/no-go) to control a shopping cart on screen, and as a result, either collected or did not collect (i.e., approach/avoidance) certain food items. When the task instructions referred to the go/no-go actions (Experiment 1, = 148), we observed an effect of these actions. Participants evaluated no-go items less positively than both go and untrained items. No effect of approach/avoidance actions was observed. Contrarily, when the task instructions referred to the approach/avoidance actions (Experiment 2, = 158), we observed an approach/avoidance effect. Participants evaluated approached items more positively and avoided items less positively than untrained items. No effect of go/no-go actions was observed. This suggests that action interpretation determined whether go/no-go or approach/avoidance actions influenced stimulus evaluation, when the same motor responses were made. Further examination of the role of action interpretation can inform theories of how actions influence stimulus evaluation, and facilitate the use of these interventions in applied settings.
对刺激执行“去/不去”或“趋近/回避”反应会改变对该刺激的评价。为了解释这些效应，一些理论观点认为，执行这些反应本身会引发情感反应（即动作执行），而另一些观点则认为，评价性影响源于将这些反应解释为具有效价的动作（即动作解释）。为了测试动作执行和动作解释在这些评价效应中的作用，我们开发了一种新颖的训练任务，该任务将“去/不去”和“趋近/回避”动作正交地结合在一起。参与者对屏幕上控制购物车的操作做出反应或不做出反应（即“去/不去”），结果，要么收集到要么没有收集到（即“趋近/回避”）某些食品。当任务指令涉及“去/不去”动作时（实验1，n = 148），我们观察到了这些动作的效应。参与者对“不去”项目的评价不如“去”项目和未训练项目积极。未观察到“趋近/回避”动作的效应。相反，当任务指令涉及“趋近/回避”动作时（实验2，n = 158），我们观察到了“趋近/回避”效应。参与者对趋近项目的评价比未训练项目更积极，对回避项目的评价比未训练项目更消极。未观察到“去/不去”动作的效应。这表明，当做出相同的运动反应时，动作解释决定了“去/不去”或“趋近/回避”动作是否会影响刺激评价。对动作解释作用的进一步研究可以为动作如何影响刺激评价的理论提供信息，并促进这些干预措施在应用环境中的使用。
