Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act

The temporal relationship between our conscious intentions to act and the action itself has been widely investigated. Previous research consistently shows that the motor intention enters awareness a few 100 ms before movement onset. As research in other domains has shown that most behavior is affect...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Rigoni, Davide, Demanet, Jelle, Sartori, Giuseppe
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554957/

id	pubmed-4554957
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45549572015-09-18 Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act Rigoni, Davide Demanet, Jelle Sartori, Giuseppe Psychology The temporal relationship between our conscious intentions to act and the action itself has been widely investigated. Previous research consistently shows that the motor intention enters awareness a few 100 ms before movement onset. As research in other domains has shown that most behavior is affected by the emotional state people are in, it is remarkable that the role of emotional states on intention awareness has never been investigated. Here we tested the hypothesis that positive and negative affects have opposite effects on the temporal relationship between the conscious intention to act and the action itself. A mood induction procedure that combined guided imagery and music listening was employed to induce positive, negative, or neutral affective states. After each mood induction session, participants were asked to execute voluntary self-paced movements and to report when they formed the intention to act. Exposure to pleasant material, as compared to exposure to unpleasant material, enhanced positive affect and dampened negative affect. Importantly, in the positive affect condition participants reported their intention to act earlier in time with respect to action onset, as compared to when they were in the negative or in the neutral affect conditions. Conversely the reported time of the intention to act when participants experienced negative affect did not differ significantly from the neutral condition. These findings suggest that the temporal relationship between the conscious intention to act and the action itself is malleable to changes in affective states and may indicate that positive affect enhances intentional awareness. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4554957/ /pubmed/26388812 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01307 Text en Copyright © 2015 Rigoni, Demanet and Sartori. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Rigoni, Davide Demanet, Jelle Sartori, Giuseppe
spellingShingle	Rigoni, Davide Demanet, Jelle Sartori, Giuseppe Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
author_facet	Rigoni, Davide Demanet, Jelle Sartori, Giuseppe
author_sort	Rigoni, Davide
title	Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
title_short	Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
title_full	Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
title_fullStr	Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
title_full_unstemmed	Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
title_sort	happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act
description	The temporal relationship between our conscious intentions to act and the action itself has been widely investigated. Previous research consistently shows that the motor intention enters awareness a few 100 ms before movement onset. As research in other domains has shown that most behavior is affected by the emotional state people are in, it is remarkable that the role of emotional states on intention awareness has never been investigated. Here we tested the hypothesis that positive and negative affects have opposite effects on the temporal relationship between the conscious intention to act and the action itself. A mood induction procedure that combined guided imagery and music listening was employed to induce positive, negative, or neutral affective states. After each mood induction session, participants were asked to execute voluntary self-paced movements and to report when they formed the intention to act. Exposure to pleasant material, as compared to exposure to unpleasant material, enhanced positive affect and dampened negative affect. Importantly, in the positive affect condition participants reported their intention to act earlier in time with respect to action onset, as compared to when they were in the negative or in the neutral affect conditions. Conversely the reported time of the intention to act when participants experienced negative affect did not differ significantly from the neutral condition. These findings suggest that the temporal relationship between the conscious intention to act and the action itself is malleable to changes in affective states and may indicate that positive affect enhances intentional awareness.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554957/
_version_	1613470975026790400

Happiness in action: the impact of positive affect on the time of the conscious intention to act

Similar Items