On angry approach and fearful avoidance: The goal-dependent nature of emotional approach and avoidance tendencies

Previous research has revealed that feelings of anger are typically accompanied by the goal to approach the emotion-evoking stimulus and feelings of fear by the goal to avoid the emotion-evoking stimulus. We set up an experiment to investigate the boundary conditions of this set of relations. We hypothesized that anger is related to approach and fear to avoidance when approach serves the goal to dominate/aggress and avoidance the goal to be submissive, but that anger is related to avoidance and fear to approach if avoidance serves the goal to dominate/aggress and approach the goal to be submissive. We manipulated the superordinate goals of approach and avoidance in an experiment in which participants moved a manikin toward or away from an opponent, depending on whether an anger or fear word appeared on their manikin (self condition) or on the opponent (opponent condition). In one condition, approach was a dominant/aggressive response (i.e., fighting) and avoidance a submissive/non-aggressive response (i.e., fleeing); in another condition, approach was a submissive/non-aggressive response (i.e., begging) and avoidance a dominant/aggressive response (i.e., stubbornly turning the back). As predicted, the reaction times of approach and avoidance depended on the goals for which approach and avoidance were instrumental as well as on the locus of the feelings (self vs. opponent). The moderation by locus excluded explanations in terms of feature overlap between stimuli (anger/fear) and responses (fight/flight and beg/stubborn).