AFFECT CONTROL THEORY AND IMPRESSION FORMATIONAFFECTIVE MEANINGCross-cultural research among people speaking
diverse languages in more than twenty-five nations
around the world (Osgood, May, and Miron 1975)
revealed that any person, behavior, object, setting,
or property of persons evokes an affective re-
sponse consisting of three components. One com-
ponent consists of approval or disapproval of the
entity—an evaluation based on morality (good
versus bad), aesthetics (beautiful versus ugly),
functionality (useful versus useless), hedonism
(pleasant versus unpleasant), or some other crite-
rion. Whatever the primary basis of evaluation, it
tends to generalize to other bases, so, for example,
something that is useful tends also to seem good,
beautiful, and pleasant.
Another component of affective responses is a
potency assessment made in terms of physical
proportions (large versus small, deep versus shal-
low), strength (strong versus weak), influence (pow-
erful versus powerless), or other criteria. Again,
judgments on the basis of one criterion tend to
generalize to other criteria, so, for example, a
powerful person seems large, deep (in a meta-
phorical sense), and strong.
The third component of affective responses—
an appraisal of activity—may depend on speed
(fast versus slow), perceptual stimulation (noisy
versus quiet, bright versus dim), age (young versus
old), keenness (sharp versus dull), or other crite-
ria. These criteria also generalize to some degree
so, for example, a young person often seems meta-
phorically fast, noisy, bright, and sharp.
The evaluation, potency, and activity (EPA)
structure in subjective responses is one of the best-
documented facts in social science, and an elabo-
rate technology has developed for measuring EPA
responses on ‘‘semantic differential scales’’ (Heise
1969). The scales consist of adjectives separated by
a number of check positions. For example, a stand-
ard scale has Good–Nice at one end and Bad–
Awful at the other end, and intervening positions
on the scale allow respondents to record the direc-
tion and intensity of their evaluations of a stimu-
lus. The middle rating position on such scales
represents neutrality and is coded 0.0. Positions
moving outward are labeled ‘‘slightly,’’ ‘‘quite,’’
‘‘extremely,’’ and ‘‘infinitely,’’ and they are coded
1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.3 respectively—positive on the
good, potent, and active sides of the scales; and
negative on the bad, impotent, and inactive sides
(Heise 1978).EPA responses tend to be socially shared with-
in a population (Heise 1966, 1999), so a group’s
average EPA response to an entity indexes the
group sentiment about the entity. Group senti-
ments can be computed from as few as thirty
ratings since each rater’s transient response origi-
nates from a single shared sentiment rather than a
separately held position (Romney, Weller, and
Batchelder 1986). Sentiments vary across cultures.
For example, potent authorities such as an em-
ployer are evaluated positively in U.S. and Canadi-
an college populations, but German students evalu-
ate authorities negatively; small children are evaluated
positively in Western nations but neutrally in Japan.IMPRESSION FORMATIONCombinations of cognitive elements bring affec-
tive meanings together and create outcome im-
pressions through psychological processes that
are complex, subtle, and yet highly predictable
(Gollob 1974; Heise 1979; Anderson 1996).One kind of impression formation amalgamates
a personal attribute with a social identity resulting
in a sense of how a person is different from similar
others (Averett and Heise 1987). For example,
among U.S. college students (the population of
raters for examples henceforth), someone who is
rich is evaluatively neutral, very powerful, and a
little on the quiet side. Meanwhile, a professor is
fairly good, fairly powerful, and a bit quiet. The
notion of a ‘‘rich professor’’ combines these senti-
ments and yields a different outcome. A rich pro-
fessor is evaluated somewhat negatively, mainly
because the personalized power of wealth gener-
ates an uneasiness that is not overcome by esteem
for academic status. A rich professor seems very
powerful because the average potency of wealth
and of professors is high, and the mind adds an
extra increment of potency because of the person-
alized power deriving from wealth. A rich profes-
sor seems even quieter than the component status-
es because activity connotations do not merely
average, they summate to some degree.The processes that are involved in combining
a social identity with a status characteristic like
‘‘rich’’ also are involved in combining a social