Affect Control Theory: Likelihoods

Measuring Impressions Against Sentiments

Events that seem likely create impressions that match sentiments. Events seem unlikely when they create impressions diverging from sentiments.

For example, a mother hugs her baby creates impressions of mother and baby that are very close to our sentiments about mothers and babies. So this event seems likely, even to the point of being something we expect of mothers. On the other hand, the lawyer abandoned his client creates impressions that depart substantially from our basic sentiments about lawyers and clients, so this event seems unusual and unexpected. Occasionally an event wrenches our feelings very far from basic sentiments, as in the policeman murdered the baby; such an event makes the policeman totally evil rather than beneficial, and this seems so unlikely that we have trouble believing such an event really happened. Observing a happening like my beloved died creates an impression of the loved one so far from the observer's sentiment that the event seems unlikely to the point of impossible, and the loved one may be conceived as still living supernaturally.

In ACT, event likelihoods are predicted from differences between sentiments and impressions.

Fundamentals and Transients

The sentiment associated with a cultural entity corresponds to the EPA profile obtained by averaging ratings of multiple individuals who are presented with the entity outside of the context of any event. The goodness, potency, and liveliness indicated by such out-of-context ratings is the entity's fundamental affective meaning. "Sentiment" and "fundamental affective meaning" are synonymous in ACT.

	Fundamental affective meanings are part of a culture's construction of reality. For example, in the U.S.A. children are seen as nice, and in Japan children are seen as neither nice nor awful. As constituents of culture, fundamental affective meanings are slow to change.
	Fundamental affective meanings are referential in defining how things are supposed to be. For example, a U.S.A. youth who violates the meaning of child as nice requires immediate attention for repair or for reconceptualization as something other than a normal child.
	Individuals internalize fundamental affective meanings during encounters with others. Consequently fundamental affective meanings are understood as social norms that warrant social control responses when challenged.

A cultural entity that is involved in a happening has an additional connotation corresponding to the impression created by that happening. This impression is measurable as the average EPA profile obtained from individuals who are experiencing the happening and who rate the entity in the context of that happening. The goodness, potency, and liveliness indicated by such in-context ratings is the entity's transient affective meaning. "Impression" and "transient affective meaning" are synonymous in ACT.

	A transient affective meaning comes from an individual's interpretation of an event. Though an event seems to be an encounter with reality, the transient affective meanings resulting from an event can be changed during social negotiations about what configuration of cultural entities constitutes a correct interpretation.
	A transient affective meaning is an emergent meaning in an event. This emergent meaning applies to a particular person, behavior, or setting being experienced in the context of that event in that place at that time.
	A transient affective meaning is transformed by subsequent events as new impressions are formed. Consequently a transient affective meaning is short lived.

Deflection

Events deflect feelings away from sentiments. The deflection is small in the case of likely events and large in the case of unlikely events.

A different way of saying the same thing is that event likelihood depends on the extent to which transient affective meanings differ from fundamental affective meanings. Since both transient and fundamental affective meanings can be measured on EPA scales, the extent of the difference, or degree of the deflection, can be measured numerically.

Consider the lawyer abandoned his client, for example. A lawyer's fundamental affective meaning is slightly good, quite powerful, and neither lively nor quiet - an EPA profile of 0.85, 1.56, 0.05 among U.S.A. male college students. However, a lawyer who abandons his client seems quite bad, only a bit powerful, and a bit active: -1.39, 0.45, 0.46, according to ACT's impression-formation equations. Thus the event deflects the affective meaning of lawyer by making the lawyer much less good and powerful and a bit too active. The event deflects the meanings of abandon and client, too, with abandoning seeming less bad, powerless, and active in this context, and client seeming less good and potent. These deflections are shown in the following chart.

A total deflection is a single overall measure of differences between all of the fundamental and transient meanings in an event.

Mathematically it makes sense to compute a total deflection by summing the squared differences on EPA for actor, behavior, and object (and for setting, too, if a setting is specified). Using this procedure to continue the above example, the total deflection for the lawyer abandoned his client is 10.0.

Values of total deflection roughly translate to verbal assessments of event likelihood as follows.

	If an event's deflection is eight or less, the event seems customary, or common.
	Events that produce deflections from nine to sixteen seem remarkable, unusual.
	Events producing deflections from seventeen to twenty-four seem extraordinary, rare.
	Events with deflections of twenty-five or more seem incredible, unique.
	Events producing deflections of more than forty-five seem impossible, and may instigate speculations about the supernatural.

Stress

In affect control theory, psychological stress is deflection that cannot be resolved. The affect control theory formulation of stress leads to inferences that fit results from stress research. On one hand, for individuals with positive selves, good events like becoming a parent or getting a promotion can be stressful, but bad events generate more deflection and in general are more stressful than good events. On the other hand, both good and bad events are stressful for individuals with negative selves, and such individuals thereby are susceptible to more stress and more of the consequences of stress than are individuals with positive selves.

Deflection might continue unresolved, thereby turning into stress, because:

	The individual is chronically involved in situations where others define the situation differently. Flight attendants are an example: they see some passengers as rude oafs, but these passengers see themselves as privileged members of an elite class, and the passengers are supported by airline managers who package status into the product they sell.
	The individual is in a relationship that produces deflection structurally. For example, an individual in a potent identity who frequently becomes the object of another's actions will feel stressed by the depreciation of the potent identity.
	The individual cannot easily or quickly repair a distressing happening. Death of a loved one, for example, is a happening that cannot easily be denied, or reinterpreted.

The following graph shows how stress (i.e., deflections) arise when one is the object of others' actions. The object person for the imaginary events sampled in this graph always is "I, myself" (male EPA: 2.5, 1.7, 1.8). Actors have varying evaluations as shown on the graph but always have potency and activity ratings of 1.0. Similarly behaviors have varying evaluations as shown on the graph with a constant potency and activity rating of 1.0.

Non-stressful events are those in which your friends, loved ones, and other valued individuals perform nice acts toward you - the dark blue area on the graph. The highest levels of stress arise when valued individuals act badly toward you - the multi-colored peak on the graph. A valued individual acting too nicely toward you stresses you only somewhat - the surface rises only a little on the right for valued actors. Also, being treated badly by bad people is only somewhat stressful even though such events are emotionally unpleasant. However, stress does build when an evil individual starts acting either too terribly or too nicely toward you!

The graph would change if based on computations with alternative object persons (e.g. see the comparable graph with child as object) or if we varied the potency and activity of the actor and behavior. Also, additional graphs would be needed to show how stress arises from varying your own behaviors toward a variety of object persons.

Deflection, Emotion, Stress

Deflection is related to a sense of likelihood, not emotion.

In particular, affect control theory posits that an individual can experience intense emotion with no deflection, when experiencing the characteristic emotion for a non-neutral identity. Additionally, an individual might feel no emotion even though deflected. For example, a mother whose EPA transient is about half her identity EPA profile has three or four units of deflection with respect to her own identity, but she experiences no emotion; rather she is experiencing life as oddly lackluster.

Since stress is chronic deflection, a similar relation holds between stress and emotion. Life can be intensely emotional and yet not at all stressful, when one is experiencing the emotions that are characteristic of one's identity. On the other hand, an emotionally flat life can be at least moderately stressful for an individual who is trying to maintain an exceptional self.

High deflection means things are strange, unique, singular, inconceivable. Life is stressful when it turns interminably strange, unique, singular, inconceivable.

URL: www.indiana.edu/~socpsy/ACT/acttutorial/likeliho.htm