On the Interplay Between Stimulus-driven and Goal-directed Processes in the Decision to Fight or Flee

Traditional emotion theories assume that stimulus-driven processes are responsible for early emotional action tendencies and that goal-directed processes step in at a later stage to implement or correct these action tendencies. In contrast to this, a recent, goal-directed theory proposes that goal-directed processes operate in parallel with stimulus-driven processes at an early stage, that they enter in competition with the stimulus-driven processes, and that they defeat stimulus-driven processes in most cases. Recent studies found evidence that goal-directed processes can indeed determine early action tendencies, but they did not examine what happens when these processes enter in competition with stimulus-driven processes. The aim of the current study was to examine whether goal-directed processes can also determine early action tendencies when they are put in competition with a stimulus-driven process. To test this, we first conducted two experiments (N = 59; N = 40) to establish the operation of a stimulus-driven process and we conducted a third experiment (N = 103) in which the stimulus-driven process was pitted against a goal-directed process. Early action tendencies were measured with implicit measures (i.e., compatibility tasks). The first two experiments provided support for the operation of a stimulus-driven process in which negative valence elicits a tendency to fight. The third experiment suggested that the goal-directed process indeed operated in parallel with the stimulus-driven process, but not that the goal-directed process was able to literally defeat the stimulus-driven process.