RASIPAJ

The aim of the RASIPAJ project is to gain a better understanding of how affects contribute to the production of individuals' judgments and performances. At the heart of the project is a theoretical proposition suggesting that individuals use their affective reactions to respond to environmental demands. More precisely, it is proposed that when faced with a complex or ambiguous task, individuals simplify the task to respond in typically binary way (e.g., “yes” vs. “no”), and that the subtle affect provoked by the presence of an affective stimulus is used to select one of the responses (positive = yes; negative = no). The effect of affect on performance and judgments would not be as direct, as sometimes assumed, but moderated by the way in which individuals interpret the current task or situation. Preliminary studies seem to attest to the plausibility of these theoretical propositions (Pillaud & Ric, 2022; 2024; 2025). The RASIPAJ project proposes to test the generality of these effects, and to identify the processes underlying them. To this end, a first axis will aim to generalize the effects already observed to other tasks and other operationalizations of the key factors (WP1). The second axis will more directly examine the processes involved in these effects (WP2). Finally, the third axis (WP3) will explore the origin of these effects, determining whether they stem from an affective or evaluative (semantic) reaction. While this project is obviously focused on theoretical questions relating to the interaction between affect and cognition, it is not without potential consequences in more applied fields, since some of the tasks used or to which the theoretical reasoning can be applied, are commonly used as diagnostic tools.