Effects of Emotions on Social Information Processing

In last week’s article I looked at the cognitive processes that people use in spontaneously violent incidents. Before looking at how emotions and feelings are involved and influence these processes, I want to look at some of the characteristics of Spontaneous Incidents (in comparison to premeditated ones), so that we can better understand how and why emotions effect our responses. As a quick reminder, Premeditated acts of aggression are those that have some degree of planning and premeditation to them, such as muggings and street robberies, whereas Spontaneous Incidents are caused by some external event happening that causes the person to become aggressive e.g., such as someone spilling a drink over them etc. Below are some of the major differences between these two types of aggression and violence, which will help us better understand the role of emotions in spontaneous events:

• Spontaneous acts of violence are motivated by feelings of fear or contest, whereas Premeditated ones are motivated by desires and needs.
• The function of Spontaneous aggression/violence is to reduce and eliminate a threat, whether real or perceived, whereas the function of a Premeditated act is to achieve a goal.
• The emotional arousal in Spontaneous incidents is high and unstable whereas in Premeditated ones it is largely controlled and stable.
• The initiation of Spontaneous acts is sudden and volatile whereas Premeditated acts have steps and stages, which are largely controlled.
• In Spontaneous incidents targets can quickly be switched e.g., aggression that is initially directed at one party can be redirected to another, if that individual is deemed a threat to them, whereas in premeditated acts that target usually stays constant.

It can be seen that spontaneous events are usually much more emotional and volatile, with the aggressor seeing everyone as a potential threat etc.

The first thing to note about social information processing and the cognitive scripts that are used (click here to read last week’s article on this), is that they are directly affected by a person’s emotional state. In fact, someone who is highly emotional is likely to use the first solution that they come across, rather than evaluate it against others. They are also less likely to process the scripts they use, such as those associated with retribution, against those that inhibit them e.g., an individual who finds their partner in bed with another person and becomes highly emotional because of it, is more likely to act upon a retribution script, and less likely to filter their response with inhibitory scripts, such as using violence to hurt or kill somebody is wrong etc. Feelings are our interpretations of our emotional state(s), and if using violence would “feel” good to us, we are more likely to act violently i.e., a retrieved script that feels good is more likely to be acted upon than one that feels bad – if it would feel gratifying to use violence there is a good chance we will. Something that can play into this is our level of sensitivity to violence. Individuals who have become desensitized towards violence, perhaps through upbringing and experience, are less likely to view acting violently negatively, and may instead have positive experiences using it.

Emotions can also be misattributed or transferred. Emotions lead to arousal, and that arousal is interpreted cognitively, which results in a “feeling”. The way to understand this is that “arousal” is a general physical state, and that we give meaning to that state based on external factors e.g., physiologically anger and fear are the same emotional state, however if we are walking down a street late at night when we become adrenalized we are likely to interpret this state as “fear”, when if we become aroused in the same way by an injustice we see we will experience this state as “anger” etc. This means we can sometimes misinterpret and mislabel our feelings e.g., if we are at a bar or club talking to someone we are attracted to and experience a level of emotional arousal, and then as we go to buy a drink someone bumps into us, we can transfer the interpretation of aroused state from one of sexual excitement to one of anger i.e., we switch our interpretation of what caused our emotional state, from one stimuli to another. What this means is that in any environment where emotions run high (even if they are interpreted positively), if something happens to us that might be perceived as a threat, a challenge, or a contest, we will now interpret our already aroused state as being a result of that. This is something I have seen at soccer/football games where the exhilaration at watching a goal be scored is suddenly replaced by extreme anger after someone accidentally bumps into someone else etc., as everyone is celebrating. We should be aware that when we are in highly emotional environments minor behaviors and actions can be quickly emotionally misattributed, and that if our subsequent actions seem to confirm that we are perceived as a threat and the reason for a person’s already aroused state it is likely that an aggressive confrontation will ensue.

It is important to understand how our emotional state(s) affects the retrieval of our memories and our cognitive scripts, both in interpreting others’ and our own propensities for aggression and violence. Understanding things such as misattribution of emotions may helps us explain why people who would seem to be the most unaggressive and risk-averse may become violent when highly aroused due to other reasons etc. We should also acknowledge there are times when acting aggressively and violently may “feel” good but that this doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. Angry people often believe they are right to feel the way they do, and are justified in using violence, and a lot of this is due to the fact that they choose the first solution they find and fail to run it through any filters – something we should be aware of in both ourselves and others.