Effects of Arousal on Organization of Positive and Negative Affect and Cognitions: Application to Attitude Theory

This study explores the impact of arousal on key relations in attitude theory. Specifically, arousal was hypothesized and found to (a) increase the association between positive cognitions about the consequences of an act and attitudes toward the act and (b) decrease the association between negative cognitions and attitudes, thereby producing positive-negative asymmetries. No positive-negative asymmetries were predicted and found, however, for the association between positive or negative affective reactions toward the consequences of the act and attitudes. Finally, arousal was hypothesized and also found to induce a unitization in general affective and cognitive evaluations. High arousal and low arousal were manipulated through the controlled viewing of slides in a fully randomized, two-group design with measurement error taken into account and electrodermal activity monitored to demonstrate changes in arousal. Subjects were 220 male students who provided judgments, evaluations, and attitudes toward the act of giving blood. Knowledge-assembly theory and the semantic network theory of memory were used to frame hypotheses that, in turn, are based on a cognitive social learning theory of the self-regulation of one's emotional states.