The Effect of Negative Emotion on Deductive Reasoning Examining the Contribution of Physiological Arousal

The Effect of Negative Emotion on Deductive Reasoning Examining the Contribution of Physiological Arousal

In three experiments, we explore the link between peripheral physiological arousal and logicality in a deductive reasoning task. Previous research has shown that participants are less likely to provide normatively correct responses when reasoning about emotional compared to neutral contents. Which component of emotion is primarily involved in this effect has not yet been explored. We manipulated the emotional value of the reasoning stimuli through classical conditioning (Experiment 1), with simultaneous presentation of negative/neutral pictures (Experiment 2), or by using intrinsically negative/neutral words (Experiment 3). We measured skin conductance (SC) and subjective affective ratings of the stimuli. In all experiments, we observed a negative relationship between SC and logicality. Participants who showed greater SC reactivity to negative stimuli compared to neutral stimuli were more likely to make logical errors on negative, compared to neutral reasoning contents. There was no such link between affective ratings of the stimuli and the effect of emotion on reasoning.

在三项实验中，我们探究了在演绎推理任务中外周生理唤醒与逻辑性之间的联系。先前的研究表明，当对情绪化内容（相较于中性内容）进行推理时，参与者提供规范正确答案的可能性更低。情感的哪个成分在这种效应中起主要作用尚未得到探究。我们通过经典条件反射（实验1）、同时呈现负面/中性图片（实验2），或者使用本身具有负面/中性含义的词汇（实验3）来操控推理刺激的情感效价。我们测量了皮肤电导（SC）以及对刺激的主观情感评分。在所有实验中，我们都观察到皮肤电导与逻辑性之间呈负相关。与中性刺激相比，对负面刺激表现出更强皮肤电导反应的参与者，在对负面（相较于中性）推理内容进行推理时更有可能犯逻辑错误。刺激的情感评分与情感对推理的影响之间不存在这种联系。