Materiales y métodos 1. Materiales

Many accounts of the connections between affect and cognition assume that the cognitions that in¯uence affective experience are essentially conscious and easily accessible. This view has been challenged on many grounds, and the assumption that reasoning always precedes emotional reactions has been criticized. In a famous challenge, Zajonc (1980) asserted that ``preferences need no infer-ences''. Although Zajonc (1980) overstated his argument, he never-theless provided a corrective to writings on the subject of cognition and affect that fail to take into account the in¯uence of non-conscious factors on emotional experiences and manifestations. Critics of Zajonc's work, although correctly drawing attention to weaknesses in the general argument, appeared to attach undue and almost exclusive power to conscious cognitions. In fact, there is evidence that some of the cognitive processes involved in emotional experience are outside of easy awareness and function at an automatic level.

Thoughts and feelingsÐconcepts that have recently been expanded and renamed cognition and affectÐcommonly combine but it is their opposing pulls that evoke greatest interest. They are so

®nely intertwined that the task of unravelling them can seem futile.

People often need to exert a great deal of effort in attempting to control their fear and anxiety by cognitive means because these emotions can be so dominating. Indeed, anxiety disorders can be regarded as examples of such domination. Patients who are persist-ently anxious about dying of a heart attack, even though they accept medical advice that they are in sound health, can be said to suffer from an imbalance between cognition and affect; to suffer from an imbalance between thoughts and feelings. Patients suffering from OCD can also be said to be suffering from a domination of affect; they are well aware that their intense fears of disease-contagion are excessive and even groundless, and that washing their hands repetitively is futile. Their anxiety is so dominating, however, that it over-rules their rational appraisal.

The concept of irrational behaviour, exquisitely illustrated by OCD, incorporates the idea of a clash between affect and cognition. In addition to con¯icts of this character, there are many other oppor-tunities for inconsistencies between cognition and affect. It is common to feel extreme apprehension without a satisfactory explanation of the cause or source of the dread, a disconnection that is embedded in most de®nitions of anxiety. For example, one might have a con-ditioned anxiety reaction to stimuli of which one is unaware. It is also

possible to attribute one's extreme apprehension to an incorrect cause or sourceÐsuch misinterpretations are indeed regarded by cognitive-behavioural therapists as the very basis of anxiety disorders (Clark, 1986, 1997; Salkovskis, 1996a).

The relations between cognition and affect are not only intricate but are also in ¯ux. To further complicate matters they can, and do, change at different speeds, making attempts to disentangle their connections extremely dif®cult. When carrying-out fear reduction techniques it is not uncommon to ®nd that the behavioural mani-festations of fear decline hours, days, or even weeks before the person reappraises the level and nature of their anxiety. Direct observation of the person's cognitions about the object of the fear or the nature of the anxiety are not possible and it is dif®cult and rare for the affected person to be able to pinpoint the exact moment at which his or her cognitions altered. Rather, they tend to become aware of altered cognitions retrospectively and report that the change occurred at some time during the past week or two.

We are intrigued and puzzled by these inconsistencies between affect and cognition, or their con¯icts, in part because we tend to assume that they are better integrated than in fact they are. Zajonc (1980) proposed a radically different interpretation of these incon-sistencies in his provocative paper, Feeling and thinking. He argued that affective judgements:

. . . may be fairly independent of and precede in time the sorts of perceptual and cognitive operations commonly assumed to be the basis of these affective judgments . . . affective reactions can occur without extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding, are made with greater con®dence than cognitive judgments and can be made sooner . . . it is concluded that affect and cognition are under the control of separate and partially independent systems . . . (Zajonc, 1980, p. 151)

He laid great stress on the claim that affect is often, even usually, precognitive. According to Zajonc, the features of a stimulus or set of stimuli that determine affective reactions ``might be gross, vague and global . . . thus they might be insuf®cient as a basis for cognitive judgments . . .'' (p. 159). He contrasted affective responses with ``cold cognitions'' and described affective responses as ``effortless, inescap-able, irrevocinescap-able, holistic, more dif®cult to verbalize, yet easy to communicate and understand'' (p. 169). He also described affective

responses as instantaneous, dominant, primary, precognitive, and automatic. For example, we might experience an ``instant'' liking for a person on ®rst meeting and, more troubling, an ``instant'' dislike of a new person even though we recognize the absurdity and injustice of our reactions.

Most of Zajonc's supportive evidence was drawn from research in social psychology, with an emphasis on the development of affective preferences, which he argues are largely a matter of familiarity.

Preferences need no inferences.

Many of Zajonc's observations can be extended to clinical phe-nomena but it should not be assumed that the perplexity many patients feel in the face of their irrational, anxious behaviour is con®ned to people with psychological problems. Disturbing ¯uctua-tions of mood are perplexing for all of us. If Zajonc is on the right track, and if affective reactions are indeed precognitive, automatic, dominant, non-verbal, and provoked by stimuli that are gross, vague and global, it is small wonder that we encounter so many inexplicable affective experiences. Rather, it begins to seem remarkable that we ever have a clue about the true source or cause of our feelings.

Given the properties that Zajonc attributes to affective judgements, it is no surprise that the attempts made by psychologists and others to produce substantial attitude changes through direct communication and persuasion can be less than successful. Affect is relatively independent of and often impervious to cognitions.

Most of the examples Zajonc uses to explain why affective reactions are resistant to change by cognitive means describe attempts that have been made to reduce affective reactions. But it is easier to ®nd examples in which such reactions were initiated or even increased by cognitive means [see Rachman (1990) for examples]. If anything, we appear to have a lack of symmetry. Cognitive operations might be a weak means of reducing affective reactions but a powerful method for inducing or increasing affective reactions. This asymmetry suggests that the independence of affective and cognitive systems is not as complete as implied by Zajonc.

Zajonc's work is stimulating but there is a risk of overlooking his tendency to overconclude from limited data. There are inconsisten-cies in his theorizing, some of the key concepts are unsatisfactorily de®ned or ambiguous, and there is a shortage of supporting evi-dence. However, his writings are a useful reminder that affect and cognition are indeed relatively independent, that they have some important distinguishing characteristics, and that the assumption of a high degree of integration between affect and cognition is not always

warranted. Recent thinking on the subject rests on differences between conscious processing, which is slow and controlled, and non-conscious processing, which is automatic and fast.

Evidence for non-conscious cognitive processing comes from various sources, including subliminal perceptions (Dixon, 1981), selective attention (Broadbent, 1958, 1971; Treisman, 1960), implicit memory (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993; Tulving, 1983), verbal reports of cognitive operations (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), and the phenomena of automatic cognitive processing (McNally, 1995). Reviews of non-conscious processes involved in anxiety are provided by Michael Eysenck (1992), Williams et al. (1997), and Mathews and MacLeod (1994).

The attentional processes that play so important a part in anxiety are not always in the forefront of awareness (see Mathews &

MacLeod, 1994; McNally, 1995; Williams et al., 1997). On a broader level, the implicational meaning of the cognitions that might well contribute to anxiety are not readily accessible (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993). As Michael Eysenck (1992) noted in his analysis of the biological value of anxiety, a system that is ``specially adapted for the purpose of threat detection'' must include ``sensors'' that facilitate rapid, early, accurate detection. He suggests that, ``Almost certainly, pre-attentive and/or attentional processes are centrally involved,'' (p. 5). Given that the rapid detection of early warning signs of danger is of survival value, any warning system that depended on a careful, rational appraisal of each threat would forfeit re®nement for failure.

Summary

People become highly vigilant when entering a potentially intimi-dating situation, scanning broadly and then focusing narrowly on any perceived threat. Attention and sensitivity are enhanced and ongoing behaviour is inhibited. If the potential threat is interpreted as dangerous, then anxiety arises and is followed by escape, avoidance, or coping behaviour.

People vary in their vulnerability to anxiety, with the most anxiety-prone inclined to be overly vigilant and to scan rapidly. They are also inclined to misperceive or misinterpret events and/or exaggerate their seriousness.

The narrowing of attention can be directed externally or internally (self-focused attention). Excessive self-focused attention is implicated

in various forms of anxiety, notably test anxiety, health anxiety, social anxiety, and sexual anxiety.

Anxiety and memory interact and in turn in¯uence the processing of emotional events or materials. Emotional processing is impeded by excessive arousal, avoidance, fatigue, misperceptions, and misinter-pretations. The relations between affect, such as anxiety, and cog-nition are complex and contain important non-conscious elements.

3