The Influence Of Uncertainty On Affective Adaptation

Affective adaptation is the psychological process by which people become accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus, such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time. Uncertainty is disgusting: individuals have a strong incentive to avoid or reduce uncertainty, then forecast and control the environment. However, in some cases, reduce uncertainty will also decrease happiness. The uncertainty intensification hypothesis proposed that uncertainty may enhance emotional intensity during the process of emotional reaction, and maintain the strength after the emotional reaction, which is the phenomenon that the affective adaptation get delay. Therefore, this study assumed that the uncertainty may delay the occurrence of emotional adaptation, so as to impact the affective adaptation.However, in different cultural backgrounds there are different uncertainty orientation, existing researches mainly selected Japanese as a representative of the Oriental culture, there was no Chinese as subjects yet. In our country, there is little research about the impact of uncertainty on affective adaptation, and existing researches still open to questions on experimental materials and experimental treatment. Accordingly, the first experiment tries to improve the experimental materials and procedures, and explored whether uncertainty will enhance the emotional response in the context of Chinese culture.In addition, people exhibit different tolerance levels to varying degrees of uncertainty; hence the influence of uncertainty on emotion will occur under certain conditions. Too much uncertainty is repulsive, even if it is in the positive events. Therefore, the second experiment focuses on what sort of degree of uncertainty can have a positive effect on affective adaptation.Experiment I:all subjects’positive emotions evoked by the movie clip firstly, then assessed the uncertain situation’ emotion and the certain situation’ emotion twice respectively. The result showed that, in uncertain situation the different between the first emotion assessment scores and the second assessment scores is not significant, the emotion not subsided temporarily, indicate that uncertainty can delay the occurrence of emotional adaptation; However in uncertain situation the different between the first emotion assessment scores and the second assessment scores is significant (p<0.01), the affective adaptation occurred in certain situation. Experiment Ⅱ:we set three treatments situations that include high uncertainty, low uncertainty, and completely certainty. The result shows that, in certain situation the different between the first emotion assessment scores and the second assessment scores is significant, which means that the affective adaptation occurred; in low uncertain situation the different between the first emotion assessment scores and the second assessment scores is not significant, the emotion not subsided temporarily, indicate that uncertainty can delay the occurrence of emotional adaptation in low uncertain situation; However in high certain situation, the different between the first emotion assessment scores and the second assessment scores is not significant, which means that, too much uncertainties beyond individual’s tolerance levels, so high uncertainty no longer be able to delay affective adaptation.The results of this study show that,(1) uncertainty can delay the occurrence of affective adaptation effectively, especially for positive emotions; however, the influence of uncertainty on emotion will occur under certain conditions;(2) too many uncertainties will beyond individual’s tolerance levels, no longer be able to delay affective adaptation.