Drawing from empirical literature on ecological psychology, affective neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, this article describes a model of affect-as-motivation in the intentional bond between organism and environment. An epistemological justification for the motivating role of emotions is provided through articulating the perceptual context of emotions as embodied, situated, and functional, and positing perceptual salience as a biasing signal in an affordance competition model. The motivational role of affect is pragmatically integrated into discussions of action selection in the neurosciences.

In this paper, I explore a debate between some Indian Buddhist schools regarding the nature of the underlying tendencies or anusaya-s. I focus here primarily on the ninth chapter of Kathāvatthu’s representation of a dispute about whether an anusaya can be said to have intentional object. I also briefly treat of Vasubandhu’s defense of the Sautrāntika view of anuśaya in the opening section of the fifth chapter his Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam. Following Vasubandhu, I argue against the Thervādin Abhidharmikas that the underlying tendencies (...) (anusaya-s) can be identified with their active manifestations (pariyuṭṭhāna). Etymologically, the notion of anusaya denotes a kind of latency, dormancy or otherwise ‘below the surface’ propensity. It can literally be translated as ‘that which lies or dwells beneath or alongside’. I will translate the term as ‘underlying tendency’, but philosophically speaking, it is most important to understand that the notion of anusaya refers to dispositions that condition current experience in a tacit way. The task of a philosophical account of the anusaya-s is to explain how their implicit conditioning influence shapes occurrent mental activity. The Indian Buddhist philosophers exercised an enormous amount of energy in attempting to explain this relation. A thorough examination of this dialectic has two important fruits to bear. The first is that the Buddhists can help us explain in precise detail how the mind is affectively layered. That is, they have a plausible account of how the mind is both responsive in real time to the objects it encounters in the world, while at the same time being tacitly conditioned by its own history of affective bias. Indeed, as we will see, the Buddhists were deeply concerned with how processes of affective bias were operating at the deepest levels of the mind and how we ought to conceive of their influence on our ordinary processes of perception and cognition. Second, this local position within the Buddhist milieu is indicative of a wider propensity in Buddhist philosophy to blend analyses of affectively-biased intentions and causation. I submit that this blending could be helpful in a more global for contemporary discussions of the mind in philosophy and science. (shrink)

How do cognition and affect interact to produce action? Research in intergroup psychology illuminates this question by investigating the relationship between stereotypes and prejudices about social groups. Yet it is now clear that many social attitudes are implicit. This raises the question: how does the distinction between cognition and affect apply to implicit mental states? An influential view—roughly analogous to a Humean theory of action—is that “implicit stereotypes” and “implicit prejudices” constitute two separate constructs, reflecting different mental processes and neural (...) systems. On this basis, some have also argued that interventions to reduce discrimination should combat implicit stereotypes and prejudices separately. We propose an alternative framework. We argue that all putative implicit stereotypes are affect-laden and all putative implicit prejudices are “semantic,” that is, they stand in co-activating associations with concepts and beliefs. Implicit biases, therefore, consist in “clusters” of semantic-affective associations, which differ in degree, rather than kind. This framework captures the psychological structure of implicit bias, promises to improve the power of indirect measures to predict behavior, and points toward the design of more effective interventions to combat discrimination. (shrink)

Valence is a central component of all affective states, including pains, pleasures, emotions, moods, and feelings of desire or repulsion.This paper has two main goals. One is to suggest that enough is now known about the causes, consequences, and properties of valence to indicate that it forms a unitary natural-psychological kind, one that seemingly plays a fundamental role in motivating all kinds of intentional action. If this turns out to be true, then the correct characterization of the nature of valence (...) becomes an urgent philosophical issue. There appear to be just two accounts that have the required generality. According to one, valence is a nonconceptual representation of value. According to the other, valence is an intrinsic qualitative property of experience. The second goal of the paper is to contrast and evaluate these two views of the nature of valence, drawing on the relevant empirical findings. Overall, I suggest that the representational account is more plausible. (shrink)

While it is important to learn what is good and bad, can people learn what is neither? The answer to this question is not readily apparent, but it has important implications for how people learn affective responses. Six experiments examined whether evaluative conditioning (EC) can instill neutral affect. They tested four hypotheses: EC, in which novel conditioned stimuli (CSs) are paired with neutral unconditioned stimuli (USs) (1) creates neutral affect, (2) forms stronger experiences of neutrality when the number of contingent (...) CS-US pairings is high rather than low, (3) creates positive affect, due to mere exposure, and (4) forms responses that are distinct from no US pairings. Respondents rated how positive, negative, and neutral they felt about a CS before and after an EC task in which CSs were paired with USs (positive, negative, neutral, or no stimuli). The positive/negative US conditions increased/decreased positivity, decreased/increased negativity, and decreased neutrality ratings, respectively. Supporting hypotheses 1, 2, and 4, the neutral US, but not the no US, condition increased neutral evaluations when respondents experienced a high (vs. low) number of CS-US pairings. Hypothesis 3 was not supported. The results reveal that people learn not only valenced, but also neutral, preferences. (shrink)

Indirect observation is a recent concept in systematic observation. It largely involves analyzing textual material generated either indirectly from transcriptions of audio recordings of verbal behavior in natural settings (e.g., conversation, group discussions) or directly from narratives (e.g., letters of complaint, tweets, forum posts). It may also feature seemingly unobtrusive objects that can provide relevant insights into daily routines. All these materials constitute an extremely rich source of information for studying everyday life, and they are continuously growing with the burgeoning (...) of new technologies for data recording, dissemination, and storage. Narratives are an excellent vehicle for studying everyday life, and quantitization is proposed as a means of integrating qualitative and quantitative elements. However, this analysis requires a structured system that enables researchers to analyze varying forms and sources of information objectively. In this paper, we present a methodological framework detailing the steps and decisions required to quantitatively analyze a set of data that was originally qualitative. We provide guidelines on study dimensions, text segmentation criteria, ad hoc observation instruments, data quality controls, and coding and preparation of text for quantitative analysis. The quality control stage is essential to ensure that the code matrices generated from the qualitative data are reliable. We provide examples of how an indirect observation study can produce data for quantitative analysis and also describe the different software tools available for the various stages of the process. The proposed method is framed within a specific mixed methods approach that involves collecting qualitative data and subsequently transforming these into matrices of codes (not frequencies) for quantitative analysis to detect underlying structures and behavioral patterns. The data collection and quality control procedures fully meet the requirement of flexibility and provide new perspectives on data integration in the study of biopsychosocial aspects in everyday contexts. (shrink)