Effects of motivational cues on perceptual asymmetry: implications for creativity and analytical problem solving.

In 4 experiments, participants were led to focus on either the prospect of positive outcomes (approach anticipation) or the prospect of negative outcomes (avoidance anticipation) and were subsequently administered behavioral measures of relative hemispheric activation. It was found that approach, relative to avoidance-related anticipatory states, produced greater relative right (diminished relative left) hemispheric activation. Experiment 3 additionally demonstrated that this pattern of activation was reversed when approach and avoidance states were not merely anticipatory but were also emotionally arousing. Finally, Experiment 4 replicated earlier findings demonstrating an influence of approach and avoidance anticipatory states on creativity and analytical problem solving (R. S. Friedman & J. Forster, 2001, 2003) and provided evidence that such effects are mediated by differences in relative hemispheric activation.

[1]  E. Higgins,et al.  Regulatory Focus and Strategic Inclinations : Promotion and Prevention in Decision-Making , 1997 .

[2]  A. Isen,et al.  Positive affect and decision making. , 1993 .

[3]  S. Fiske,et al.  The Handbook of Social Psychology , 1935 .

[4]  Karen Gasper.  Do you see what I see? Affect and visual information processing , 2004 .

[5]  T J Meyer,et al.  Development and validation of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. , 1990, Behaviour research and therapy.

[6]  D. Derryberry,et al.  Anxiety and attentional focusing: trait, state and hemispheric influences , 1998 .

[7]  Mark Beeman,et al.  Coarse semantic coding and discourse comprehension. , 1998 .

[8]  Marie T Banich,et al.  Asymmetry of perception in free viewing of chimeric faces , 1983, Brain and Cognition.

[9]  Mario Mikulincer,et al.  Anxiety and categorization—1. The structure and boundaries of mental categories , 1990 .

[10]  J. Lerner,et al.  Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgement and choice , 2000 .

[11]  E. Hirt,et al.  Processing goals and the affect–performance link: Mood as main effect or mood as input? , 1996 .

[12]  Jonathan W. Schooler,et al.  Verbalization produces a transfer inappropriate processing shift. , 2002 .

[13]  Gregory A. Miller,et al.  Regional brain activity in anxiety and depression, cognition/emotion interaction, and emotion regulation. , 2003 .

[14]  D. Tucker,et al.  Motivating the focus of attention. , 1994 .

[15]  E. Higgins,et al.  Beyond pleasure and pain. , 1997, The American psychologist.

[16]  Michael C. Anderson,et al.  Interference and inhibition in memory retrieval. , 1996 .

[17]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  The creative cognition approach. , 1995 .

[18]  J. Förster,et al.  The influence of approach and avoidance motor actions on creative cognition. , 2002 .

[19]  John T. Cacioppo,et al.  Foundations in Social Neuroscience , 2002 .

[20]  E. Higgins,et al.  Emotional responses to goal attainment: strength of regulatory focus as moderator. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[21]  S. Kosslyn.  Seeing and imagining in the cerebral hemispheres: a computational approach. , 1987, Psychological review.

[22]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Local cerebral glucose metabolic rates in obsessive-compulsive disorder. A comparison with rates in unipolar depression and in normal controls. , 1987, Archives of general psychiatry.

[23]  W. R. Carter,et al.  Worry: An electrocortical analysis , 1986 .

[24]  Ronald G. Stansfield,et al.  Sociological Methodology 1982 , 1983 .

[25]  W. Heller,et al.  The puzzle of regional brain activity in depression and anxiety: The importance of subtypes and comorbidity. , 1998 .

[26]  R. Compton,et al.  Relationship between coping styles and perceptual asymmetry. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  E. Higgins,et al.  Motivational science : social and personality perspectives , 2000 .

[28]  A. Isen,et al.  Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  R. Friedman,et al.  The effects of promotion and prevention cues on creativity. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[30]  Ira J. Roseman.  Cognitive determinants of emotion: A structural theory. , 1984 .

[31]  Charles S. Carver,et al.  Action, Emotion, and Personality: Emerging Conceptual Integration , 2000 .

[32]  F. Strack,et al.  Approach and avoidance: the influence of proprioceptive and exteroceptive cues on encoding of affective information. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[33]  E. Higgins,et al.  Performance incentives and means: how regulatory focus influences goal attainment. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[34]  Christine Chiarello,et al.  Right hemisphere language comprehension : perspectives from cognitive neuroscience , 1998 .

[35]  W. N. Dember,et al.  Mood and global-local visual processing , 1996, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[36]  P. Niedenthal,et al.  The heart's eye: Emotional influences in perception and attention. , 1994 .

[37]  S. Christianson.  The relationship between induced emotional arousal and amnesia. , 1984, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[38]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  Parsing the subcomponents of emotion and disorders of emotion: Perspectives from affective neuroscience. , 2003 .

[39]  D. Tucker,et al.  Anxiety and lateral cerebral function. , 1978, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[40]  R. Davidson.  Cerebral asymmetry, emotion, and affective style. , 1995 .

[41]  T. Strauman.  Self-guides, autobiographical memory, and anxiety and dysphoria: toward a cognitive model of vulnerability to emotional distress. , 1992, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[42]  M. Kinsbourne.  The cerebral basis of lateral asymmetries in attention. , 1970, Acta psychologica.

[43]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Data analysis in social psychology. , 1998 .

[44]  E. Higgins,et al.  Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. , 1996 .

[45]  M. Banich,et al.  Are variations among right-handed individuals in perceptual asymmetries caused by characteristic arousal differences between hemispheres? , 1983, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[46]  D. Watson,et al.  Tripartite model of anxiety and depression: psychometric evidence and taxonomic implications. , 1991, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[47]  J. Schooler,et al.  The ineffability of insight. , 1995 .

[48]  J. Förster,et al.  Enactment of approach and avoidance behavior influences the scope of perceptual and conceptual attention , 2006 .

[49]  J. Förster,et al.  The effects of approach and avoidance motor actions on the elements of creative insight. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[50]  H. Kunkel.  GENERAL INTRODUCTION , 1971, The Journal of experimental medicine.

[51]  Jordan Grafman,et al.  Handbook of Neuropsychology , 1991 .

[52]  Daniel Reisberg,et al.  Remembering emotional events , 1992, Memory & cognition.

[53]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  The asymmetrical brain , 2003 .

[54]  R. Yando,et al.  Selective encoding and retrieval of affectively valent information: two cognitive consequences of children's mood states. , 1982, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[55]  C. MacLeod,et al.  Cognitive approaches to emotion and emotional disorders. , 1994, Annual review of psychology.

[56]  John T. Cacioppo,et al.  Social neuroscience: Principles of psychophysiological arousal and response. , 1996 .

[57]  D. Tucker,et al.  Anxiety and perceptual structure: individual differences in neuropsychological function. , 1982, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[58]  Harish Sujan,et al.  The influence of mood on categorization: A cognitive flexibility interpretation. , 1990 .

[59]  A. Isen,et al.  The influence of affect on categorization. , 1984 .

[60]  C. Burgess,et al.  Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings , 1988, Brain and Language.

[61]  M. Mikulincer,et al.  Anxiety and categorization—2. Hierarchical levels of mental categories , 1990 .

[62]  K. Heilman,et al.  Pseudoneglect: Effects of hemispace on a tactile line bisection task , 1980, Neuropsychologia.

[63]  G. A. Miller,et al.  Contrasting patterns of brain activity in anxious apprehension and anxious arousal. , 1999, Psychophysiology.

[64]  R. Davidson.  Anterior cerebral asymmetry and the nature of emotion , 1992, Brain and Cognition.

[65]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Handbook of Emotions , 1993 .

[66]  M. L. Rusconi,et al.  Perceptual and premotor factors of unilateral neglect , 1990, Neurology.

[67]  Patterns of hemispheric perceptual asymmetries: left hemispatial biases predict changes in anxiety and positive affect in undergraduate women. , 2001, Emotion.

[68]  A. Wells,et al.  Book Review: Concise Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry, 2nd edn , 2004 .

[69]  D. Murphy,et al.  Local cerebral glucose metabolic rates in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Patients treated with clomipramine. , 1990, Archives of general psychiatry.

[70]  J. Bradshaw,et al.  Why is there a left side underestimation in rod bisection? , 1987, Neuropsychologia.

[71]  J. Metcalfe,et al.  A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: dynamics of willpower. , 1999, Psychological review.

[72]  L. Wheeler,et al.  Review of personality and social psychology , 1980 .

[73]  J. Easterbrook.  The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior. , 1959, Psychological review.

[74]  G A Miller,et al.  Patterns of regional brain activity differentiate types of anxiety. , 1997, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[75]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Handbook of emotions, 2nd ed. , 2000 .

[76]  B. Bergum,et al.  Perceptual Narrowing as a Function of Peripheral Cue Relevance , 1972, Perceptual and motor skills.

[77]  A. Isen,et al.  The influence of positive affect on the unusualness of word associations. , 1985, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[78]  M. Kinsbourne.  The mechanism of hemispheric control of the lateral gradient of attention , 1975 .

[79]  Karen Gasper,et al.  Attending to the Big Picture: Mood and Global Versus Local Processing of Visual Information , 2002, Psychological science.

[80]  M. Buchsbaum,et al.  Topographic EEG changes with benzodiazepine administration in generalized anxiety disorder , 1985, Biological Psychiatry.

[81]  P. A. Williamson,et al.  Asymmetric neural control systems in human self-regulation. , 1984, Psychological review.

[82]  K. Scherer,et al.  Handbook of affective sciences. , 2003 .

[83]  David M. Amodio,et al.  Implicit regulatory focus associated with asymmetrical frontal cortical activity. , 2004 .

[84]  A. Milner,et al.  To halve and to halve not: An analysis of line bisection judgements in normal subjects , 1992, Neuropsychologia.

[85]  B. Morton.  Two-hand line-bisection task outcomes correlate with several measures of hemisphericity , 2003, Brain and Cognition.

[86]  Don M. Tucker,et al.  Anxiety and the Motivational Basis of Working Memory , 1998, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[87]  S. Dornič,et al.  Attention and performance V , 1976 .