Approach and avoidance of social information.

Abstract

The present study examined how an approach or avoidance tendency to information influences the perception of related behaviours. The sexual attitudes of 104 male and female subjects were assessed prior to viewing either a birth control, conservative social values, or educational issues lecture. Subjects indicated the number of meaningful actions in the sequence by pressing a thumb switch. It was hypothesized that more units would be indicated when the topic was consistent with the subject's sexual attitudes, due to an attempt to gain more informational content. As expected, sexual attitudes interacted with lecture topic. Subjects with positive sexual attitudes (erotophiles) indicated more units in the birth control condition, whereas subjects with negative sexual attitudes (erotophobes) indicated more units in the social values condition. No differences were found in the educational issues (control) condition. These results suggest that there are chronic differences in the segmentation patterns of individuals, reflecting affective orientations towards social information