title: The Interpretation of Cognitive Feelings
creator: Unkelbach, Christian
subject: ddc-300
subject: 300 Social sciences
description: The present thesis deals with cognitive feelings, which are derived from an ease or fluency dimension of ongoing cognitive processes. Such experiences influence many judgments and inferences: For example, judgments about the frequency of events, inferences about the truth of statements or decisions whether an object is recognized or not. It is argued that the specific impact of such experiences depends on the interpretation of a given cognitive feeling, which provides meaning for a hitherto unspecific experience. Furthermore, it is argued that such interpretations may either be explicitly provided or implicitly learned. The empirical section supporting this claim is divided into two parts: Part I shows the impact of such interpretations when they are explicitly provided. This is done within the realm of “ease of retrieval” experiences and their influence on evaluative judgments. Two experiments are reported that lend support to the idea that cognitive feelings, in this case, the experienced ease of retrieval, depend on the available interpretations. Part II shows the impact of such interpretations when they are learned via feedback from the environment. This is done within the realm of fluency experiences and their influence on recognition judgments. Usually, stimuli that are more fluently processed have a higher probability to be classified as “old” than non-fluently processed stimuli. Two experiments show that this robust finding can be reversed when the environment provides feedback that fluency indicates that a stimulus is new rather than old. That is, it is shown that the impact of fluency is dependent on the learned interpretation of fluency. Building on the presented empirical evidence, the discussion addresses the assumptions underlying the interpretation hypothesis, the implications for existing results from research on cognitive feelings, and new research questions that arise from this model of how we interpret the experience of thinking.
date: 2004
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5733/1/Unkelbach_Diss.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00005733
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-57331
identifier:   Unkelbach, Christian  (2004) The Interpretation of Cognitive Feelings.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5733/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng