Non-contingent affective outcomes influence judgments of control

Conscious Cogn. 2023 Jul 13;113:103552. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103552. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTOur main goal in these experiments was to examine whether affective valence plays a role in judgments of control (JoC) in intentional action. To test this, we asked participants to completevariationsofasimple aiming task in which words appeared in place of clicked targets. The affective content of the words was manipulated during the experiments but was not contingent on participants' performance. Throughout the task, participants were periodically asked to judge their JoC.Thus, JoC judgments in this task included contributions of a well-established cue to judgments of control, task performance, and a source of affect that was not related to task performance. We found thatmetacognitions of controlvaried consistentlyacross levels of affect, with stronger judgments of being in control for conditions with positive outcome words (e.g., 'puppy') and the weaker judgments of being in control for conditions with negative outcome words (e.g.,'killer').These results suggestaffective outcomes can influence JoC, even though the outcomes are not related to performance.PMID:37453190 | DOI:10.1016/j.concog.2023.103552

Source: Consciousness and Cognition - July 15, 2023 Category: Neurology Authors: Sophie G Paolizzi Cory A Potts Richard A Carlson Source Type: research