Perceiving an exclusive cause of affect prevents misattribution

Affect misattribution occurs when affective cues color subsequent unrelated evaluations. Research suggests that affect misattribution decreases when one is aware that affective cues are unrelated to the evaluation at hand. We propose that affect misattribution may even occur when one is aware that affective cues are irrelevant, as long as the source of these cues seems ambiguous. When source ambiguity exists, affective cues may freely influence upcoming unrelated evaluations. We examined this using an adapted affect misattribution procedure where pleasant and unpleasant responses served as affective cues that could influence later evaluations of unrelated targets. These affective cues were either perceived as reflecting a single source (i.e., a subliminal affective picture in Experiment 1; one’s internal affective state in Experiment 2), or as reflecting two sources (i.e., both) suggesting source ambiguity. Results show that misattribution of affect decreased when participants perceived affective cues as representing one source rather than two.