itp-blog

Week 2

Emotional Design: Attractive Things Work Better

Emotions change how we think. Emotions are part of cognition, though, George Lakoff would say - so I’m not surprised. I think this chapter makes a good argument for why emotions are part of cognition.

Three levels of processing:

visceral
- referred to as “lizard brain” in a documentary I remember watching
- fast
- can compete with reflective kinds of pleasure
- rapid value judgements
  - safe vs. dangerous
  - good vs. bad
- activity initiated from this level is “bottom-up”
  - driven by perception
behavioral
- most human behavior is at this level
- muscle memory of playing piano (for skilled pianists)
- physical, sensory pleasure
reflective
- looks over the lower levels of processing
  - tries to control behavioral level of processing
  - (metacognition?)
- pleasure derived from meaning
  - ex: art
- activity initiated from this level is “top-down”
  - driven by thought
negative affect intensifies focus and attention to detail
- positive affect makes [some?? who specifically?] people more receptive to novelty
the list of things that produce negative vs. positive affect sound like a description of urban vs. rural environments
sound can modulate, control affect