Host: Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics (SOFT)
Expectation is an adaptive function which promotes information processing by preparing behavioral, emotional, and physiological systems for upcoming environmental stimuli. However, how expectation of upcoming emotional stimuli modulates processing and evaluation of the stimuli itself is unclear. Thus, present study examined whether expectation of visual unpleasant pictures modulates processing of the pictures. To accomplish this purpose, we compared subjective and electrophysiological responses to unpleasant pictures preceded by erroneously-induced high estimation of unpleasantness about upcoming pictures with an estimation which corresponded to actual unpleasantness. As a result, subjective unpleasantness rating and an electrophysiological response were higher when participants highly estimated unpleasantness of upcoming pictures than they had practical estimation. Present results indicated that emotion can not only be elicited by bottom-up information processing of environmental stimuli but also modulated by top-down expectation of the stimuli.
