Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

2020 Edition
| Editors: Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Todd K. Shackelford

Cognitive-Affective Processing System

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First Online:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1788
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Synonyms

Beliefs; Emotions; Processing goals

Definition

While the distinction between emotions and reason dates back to Aristotle (1954), contemporary social psychologists have continued to rely on this distinction, especially in the domain of attitudes and persuasion. That is, people’s affect (e.g., feeling happy) and cognition (e.g., belief about usefulness) have been conceptualized as separate components or bases of overall attitudes, which refer to the global evaluations of issues, objects, persons, or groups on a valence dimension ranging from negative to positive (e.g., Rosenberg and Hovland 1960; Zanna and Rempel 1988). In addition, much empirical evidence has demonstrated that affect (i.e., emotions) and cognition (i.e., beliefs) contribute to unique variances in attitudes (e.g., Abelson et al. 1982; Breckler 1984; Crites et al. 1994; Trafimow and Sheeran 1998). Importantly, there are no assumptions about the mental effort that is requiredto process emotions or beliefs. That...

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References

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.National University of SingaporeSingaporeSingapore

Section editors and affiliations

  • Catherine Cottrell
    • 1
  1. 1.Division of Social SciencesNew College of FloridaSarasotaUSA