Citation

Svartdal F. Scand. J. Psychol. 2011; 52(3): 209-217.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norway. frodes@psyk.uit.no

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Scandinavian Psychological Associations, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9450.2010.00860.x

PMID

21265858

Abstract

What is a "positive" outcome? Clearly, obtaining something attractive is regarded as positive, but so is avoiding something negative. The present paper compared these two types of situations in scenario-type evaluations. Participants rated positive (P), avoiding negative (AN), and negative (N) outcomes in terms of luck (Experiment 1) and overall positive/negative evaluations (Experiments 2 and 3). The results demonstrated that evaluations of P and AN outcomes were judged as equally positive, but the emotional basis for these evaluations was very different: The feeling of relief was the dominating emotion in AN situations, whereas joy was the dominating emotion in P situations. Overall, these results indicate that avoidance-induced reward value may be important as a motivating factor in cognition and action.

Language: en