In cognitive psychology, the affect-as-information hypothesis, or 'approach', is a model of evaluative processing, postulating that affective feelings provide a source of information about objects, tasks, and decision alternatives. A goal of this approach is to understand the extent of influence that affect has on cognitive functioning. It has been proposed that affect has two major dimensions, namely affective valence and affective arousal, and in this way is an embodied source of information. Affect is thought to impact three main cognitive functions: judgement, thought processing and memory. In a variety of scenarios, the influence of affect on these processes is thought to be mediated by its effects on attention. The approach is thought to account for a wide variety of behavioural phenomena in psychology.
Informative functions of affect: reaction vs. arousal
The affect as information hypothesis emphasises significance of the information that affect communicates, rather than the affective feelings themselves. Affective reactions or 'responses' provide an embodied source of information about 'value' or valence, as well as affective arousal provides an embodied source of information about importance. More specifically, affective reactions are pleasant or unpleasant reactions that provide information on positive ('good') and negative ('bad') value, respectively. Objects, task situations, and other stimuli or targets- if experienced as the source of an affective reaction- take on the positive or negative affect value. Affective arousal involves implicit (stress hormonal response such as from the adrenergic system) or explicit responses (subjective experience) that provide information on relevance, urgency, or importance. Both dimensions are thought to affect cognitive functioning through influencing judgements and decision making, processing, and memory, and in a variety of situations this is thought to be mediated through its influences on attention.
Affect on judgement and decision making
Affective reaction
A finding by Schwarz and Clore (1988) has been noted in literature (for example,), wherein individuals are thought to review and attend to their affective reactions when making evaluative judgements and decisions. They typically ask themselves, "How do I feel about it". A broad example of this (which may be applied to a variety of situations) is when considering how much we like something. Our judgements are based on how we feel about a particular stimulus as opposed to the attributes or characteristics of the said stimulus. Essentially, if the object, task situation, or other stimulus is experienced as the source of an affective reaction and takes on the affect value, then a judgement or decision may be made about the stimulus based on these attributed feelings. Positive and negative affect typically lead to positive and negative judgements, respectively.
Affective arousal
Affective arousal is thought to intensify positive and negative affective reactions and, as a result, judgemental evaluations- as if relying on affective arousal to indicate how strongly one feels about something. An empirical example of this is findings of intensified evaluations under high affective arousal when watching advertisements. Advertisements with positive and negative affective tone were evaluated as more positive and negative respectively, under conditions of high affective arousal relative to under conditions of low affective arousal.
Attribution of affect
Affect may be elicited by the stimulus or situation of relevance, which is referred to as integral affect. Conversely, affect may be momentary and coincide in time with the presence of the relevant stimulus, but be unrelated to the stimulus. This is referred to as incidental affect. Integral affect provides meaningful, relevant information about a target stimulus on which a judgement or decision can be made. Incidental affect may lead to affective feelings being subsequently mis-attributed to the stimulus at hand and thus provide mistaken information about the stimulus, from which a mislead judgement or decision is formed.