Support from a TMS/MEP study for a direct link between positive/negative stimuli and approach/avoidance tendencies.

Previous behavioral studies using stimulus-response compatibility tasks have shown that people are faster to carry out instructed approach/avoidance responses to positive/negative stimuli. This result has been taken as evidence that positive/negative stimulus valence directly activates a tendency to approach/avoid, which in turn, facilitates execution of instructed approach/avoidance behavior. In these studies, however, it cannot be excluded that the results reflect a purely semantic link between stimulus valence and instructed responses.

Early Approach and Avoidance Tendencies can be Goal-Directed: Support from a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study.

Dual-process models with a default-interventionist architecture explain early emotional action tendencies by a stimulus-driven process, and they allow goal-directed processes to intervene only in a later stage. An alternative dual-process model with a parallel-competitive architecture developed by Moors, Boddez, and De Houwer (Emotion Review, 9(4), 310-318, 2017), in contrast, explains early emotional action tendencies by a goal-directed process. This model proposes that stimulus-driven and goal-directed processes often operate in parallel and compete with each other, and that if they do compete, the goal-directed process often wins the competition.

Demystifying the role of emotion in behaviour: toward a goal-directed account.

The paper sketches the historical development from emotion as a mysterious entity and the source of maladaptive behaviour, to emotion as a collection of ingredients and the source of also adaptive behaviour. We argue, however, that the underlying mechanism proposed to take care of this adaptive behaviour is not entirely up for its task. We outline an alternative view that explains so-called emotional behaviour with the same mechanism as non-emotional behaviour, but that is at the same time more likely to produce adaptive behaviour.