Belief and Feeling in Self-reports of Emotion: Evidence for Semantic Infusion Based on Self-esteem

When people make verbal reports of their emotional experience, they can rely on multiple sources of knowledge, including generalized beliefs about the self. To the extent that generalized beliefs about the self are used, we term the resultant consequence a semantic infusion effect. Across three studies, we demonstrate the predictable consequences of making emotion judgments more quickly versus more slowly, based on a recent model of the emotional self-report process (Robinson & Clore, 2002a Robinson, M. D. and Clore, G. L. 2002a. Belief and feeling: Evidence for an accessibility model of emotional self-report. Psychological Bulletin, 128: 934–960. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). As predicted, when participants (Ns = 69, 37, and 44) made emotion judgments involving long time frames (e.g., last couple of months; Studies 1–3), faster judgments were associated with emotion ratings that were more consistent with global self-esteem. By contrast, when making emotion judgments involving a short time frame (right now; Study 3), the same pattern was not found. Results are interpreted in terms of semantic infusion effects, although other theoretical frameworks are also discussed. The results have implications for understanding global self-esteem and emotion self-reports.