Anchoring-and-Adjustment During Affect Inferences.

People can easily infer the thoughts and feelings of others from brief descriptions of scenarios. But how do they arrive at these inferences? Three studies tested how, through anchoring-and-adjustment, people used semantic and numerical anchors (irrelevant values provided by experimenters) in inferring feelings from scenario descriptions. We showed that in a between-subject design, people's inference was biased toward anchoring information (Studies 1 and 2).

The Relation Between Valence and Arousal in Subjective Experience Varies With Personality and Culture.

Objective: While in general arousal increases with positive or negative valence (a so-called V-shaped relation), there are large differences among individuals in how these two fundamental dimensions of affect are related in people's experience. In two studies, we examined two possible sources of this variation: personality and culture.

Method: In Study 1, participants (Belgian university students) recalled a recent event that was characterized by high or low valence or arousal and reported on their feelings and their personality in terms of the Five-Factor Model.