Subjective affective experience under threat is shaped by environmental affordances

Abstract

In this pre-registered study, we ask how people's emotional responses under threat may be causally affected by what is available to them in the environment, i.e. environmental affordances. For this purpose, we introduce a novel behavioral paradigm using horror movie stimuli to simulate threats. The study illustrates that affordances, specifically items present in the environment, are instrumental in modulating both behavioral choices (approach or avoidance) and emotional expressions of anger and fear. We found that, approach-related resources, such as possession of a weapon, heightened anger and the propensity to confront the threat. This underscores the influence of environmental affordances on emotional regulation and supports a theoretical framework that connects instrumental motives with the variability of emotional and behavioral responses based on affordances. The research, while innovative, recognizes the constraints of simulated threats and controlled settings, suggesting avenues for future exploration in more naturalistic environments.

Fig 1

(A) Experimental Procedures. During each trial, the participant is first presented with a horror movie clip, where the protagonist needs to make an approach-avoidance decision for survival. The participant is then presented with information regarding the environmental affordances, including the fight affordance (e.g., having tools that can be used as a weapon or not) and the escape affordance (e.g., whether the escape route is blocked or not). With this affordance information, participants make their survival decisions and rate their emotional responses. (B) Fearfulness rating for the sample movies. Clips from the horror scenes are rated more fearful than the non-horror scenes. This offers evidence that the survival decisions were prompted out of a genuine feeling of fear. Please refer to S1 File.

Fig 2

(A) Percentages of choices under different fight and escape affordances. Participants chose to fight more under the weapon condition, compared to the non-weapon condition. Similarly, they chose to flee more under the evadable condition, compared to the non-evadable condition. (B) Anger ratings with jitter points as individual averages. Lines on boxplots indicate 95% Cis. (C) Fear ratings with jitter points as individual averages. Lines on boxplots indicate 95% Cis. NW-NE non-weapon and non-evadable; NW-E: non-weapon and evadable; W-NE: weapon and non-evadable; W-E; weapon and evadable.

Fig 3

(A): Fixed effects from the Bayesian multilevel linear model predicting anger ratings. Consistent with the interaction term in the ANOVA anlalysis, there is strong evidence for a large effect from Affordance X Choice (Estimate = 1.47, 95% CI [1.23, 1.72]); (B): Fixed effects from the Bayesian multilevel linear model predicting fear ratings. With no reliable effect from either affordance, choice or trait anxiety themselves, we found a small effect from Affordance X Choice (Estimate = 0.32, 95%CI [0.09, 0.71]).