The self-attribution of emotion as a function of success and failure1

Abstract

ABSTHACn'When an act is interpreted as emotional, the responding individual generally is considered less responsible than if the act were interpreted as deliberate. This leads to the hypothesis that the selfattribution of emotion will more likely occur when behavior has undesirable rather than desirable consequences. Three experiments were conducted to explore this hypothesis. In these experiments, the self-attribution of emotion was assessed indirectly by having the subjects judge potentially arousing stimuli (e.g., nudes and corpses) after these stimuli had been associated with either failure or success on a problem-solving task. As predicted, the nudes were judged more attractive and the corpses more disturbing when they were associated with failure. This tendency was most apparent among subjects who perceived the task to be a valid indication of intellectual ability.

Studies on anger and aggression: Implications for theories of emotion.

“…As people respond in a situation, they often do not think about their behavior and how it conforms to social norms and expectancies. This opens the way for retrospective interpretations that are not completely true to the original experience (see Averill & Boothroyd, 1977;Averill, DeWitt, & Zimmer, 1978, for demonstrations and an extended discussion of this point). The conclusion does not follow, however, that the original experience of emotion is somehow unadulterated or uninfluenced by the same norms and expectations that influence retrospective interpretations.…”

“…This opens the way for retrospective interpretations that are not completely true to the original experience (see Averill & Boothroyd, 1977;Averill, DeWitt, & Zimmer, 1978, for demonstrations and an extended discussion of this point). This opens the way for retrospective interpretations that are not completely true to the original experience (see Averill & Boothroyd, 1977;Averill, DeWitt, & Zimmer, 1978, for demonstrations and an extended discussion of this point).…”

Describing the emotional states that are expressed in speech

“…Films and videos are now widely used for the induction of a variety of Gross and Levenson, 1995;Hagemann et al, 1999;Luminet et al, 2000). Still photographs, such as the ''Philadelphia Morgue'' set, have been used extensively to elicit emotions such as fear and disgust (see Averill et al, 1978). A standard set of still photographs to be used in eliciting a range of emotions was recently developed by Bradley, Lang and their colleagues (Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, 1999;Lang et al, 1999).…”

Affect and memory: A review.

“…Indeed, some researchers (e.g Averill, DeWitt, & Zimmer, 1978). have viewed subjects' evaluations of experienced stimuli as measures of emotional state.2 Judgments of whether the subject or the researcher really controlled exposure duration are on occasion regrettably subjective, even intuitive, in some cases because of inadequacies in the description of procedures.In several cases, authors' mentioning that presentation was audiotaped was the primary basis for the judgment.This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”