Abstract
Recent evidence has indicated that unlabeled residual arousal is capable of enhancing the psychological impact of potential negative outcomes. Three investigations further tested this nelationship by examining the effect of environmental lighting, an unobirusive and concurrent source of arousal, on appraisals of an avoidance goal In the first, subjects were given the opportunity to avoid an aversive noise outcome under either dim or bright illumination. As predicted, ratings of noise unpleasantness increased with the level of illumination. In the second study, two further conditions were added to the design in which subjects were given explicit arousal-labeling information. In support of the interaction prediction, noise unpleasantness evaluations were low and uniform with the provision of labeling information but reliably increased as a positive function of lighting level without it. In the final experiment, the extent and nature of the arousal, proposed to be mediating the relationship betwten lighting and goal valence, were examined.