Emotions Modulate Affordances-Related Motor Responses: A Priming Experiment

Traditionally, research on affordances and emotions follows two separate routes. For the first time, this article explicitly links the two phenomena by investigating whether, in a discrimination task (artifact vs. natural object), the motivational states induced by emotional images can modulate affordances-related motor response elicited by dangerous and neutral graspable objects. The results show faster RTs: (i) for both neutral and dangerous objects with neutral images; (ii) for dangerous objects with pleasant images; (iii) for neutral objects with unpleasant images. Overall, these data support a significant effect of emotions on affordances. The article also proposes a brain neural network underlying emotions and affordance interplay.