TY - JOUR
T1 - Affective states leak into movement execution
T2 - Automatic avoidance of threatening stimuli in fear of spider is visible in reach trajectories
AU - Buetti, Simona
AU - Juan, Elsa
AU - Rinck, Mike
AU - Kerzel, Dirk
N1 - Correspondence should be addressed to: Dirk Kerzel, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Éducation, Université de Genève, 40 Boulevard du Pont d’Arve, CH-1205 Genève, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] DK was supported by the Swiss National Foundation (SNF 10011-107768/1 and PDFM1-114417/1), MR by the Behavioural Science Institute, Nijmegen. We are grateful to the reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of the article.
PY - 2012/11
Y1 - 2012/11
N2 - Approach-like actions are initiated faster with stimuli of positive valence. Conversely, avoidance-like actions are initiated faster with threatening stimuli of negative valence. We went beyond reaction time measures and investigated whether threatening stimuli also affect the way in which an action is carried out. Participants moved their hand either away from the picture of a spider (avoidance) or they moved their hand toward the picture of a spider (approach). We compared spider-fearful participants to non-anxious participants. When reaching away from the threatening spider picture, spider-fearful participants moved more directly to the target than controls. When reaching toward the threatening spider, spider-fearful participants moved less directly to the target than controls. Some conditions that showed clear differences in movement trajectories between spider-fearful and control participants were devoid of differences in reaction time. The deviation away from threatening stimuli provides evidence for the claim that affective states like fear leak into movement programming and produce deviations away from threatening stimuli in movement execution. Avoidance of threatening stimuli is rapidly integrated into ongoing motor behaviour in order to increase the distance between the participant's body and the threatening stimulus.
AB - Approach-like actions are initiated faster with stimuli of positive valence. Conversely, avoidance-like actions are initiated faster with threatening stimuli of negative valence. We went beyond reaction time measures and investigated whether threatening stimuli also affect the way in which an action is carried out. Participants moved their hand either away from the picture of a spider (avoidance) or they moved their hand toward the picture of a spider (approach). We compared spider-fearful participants to non-anxious participants. When reaching away from the threatening spider picture, spider-fearful participants moved more directly to the target than controls. When reaching toward the threatening spider, spider-fearful participants moved less directly to the target than controls. Some conditions that showed clear differences in movement trajectories between spider-fearful and control participants were devoid of differences in reaction time. The deviation away from threatening stimuli provides evidence for the claim that affective states like fear leak into movement programming and produce deviations away from threatening stimuli in movement execution. Avoidance of threatening stimuli is rapidly integrated into ongoing motor behaviour in order to increase the distance between the participant's body and the threatening stimulus.
KW - Affective states
KW - Hand trajectories
KW - Reaching
KW - Spider phobia
KW - Threat
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U2 - 10.1080/02699931.2011.640662
DO - 10.1080/02699931.2011.640662
M3 - Article
C2 - 22394168
AN - SCOPUS:84860868683
SN - 0269-9931
VL - 26
SP - 1176
EP - 1188
JO - Cognition and Emotion
JF - Cognition and Emotion
IS - 7
ER -