Implicit Affect and Autonomous Nervous System Reactions : A Review of Research Using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test

Abstract

Ajuts: This work was partially made possible through a grant from the Templeton Rlg. Trust (TRT 0119) supporting MQ; by the National Council for Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACyT) and the Spanish Government (under Grant PSI2016-76411-R) supporting GPH.

In everyday life, affective processes occur spontaneously and typically go along with an automatic activation of action tendencies and physiological responses. Because self-reports of affect are also known to be biased by various factors, including deficits in introspection or impression management strategies, an indirect measure, the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT), was developed to assess implicit affect and to circumvent these difficulties. In this review, findings from neurobiological and clinical studies administering the IPANAT are revised, we focus on the link between implicit affect and psychophysiological reactions to affective stimuli and stressors. Specifically, implicit affect as measured by the IPANAT was found to predict cardiovascular, endocrine, and functional neuroimaging correlates of stress or fear beyond explicit affect. The present evidence strongly suggests the usage of implicit affect measures in future research on stress and psychopathology.