Playing With Matches: Preparatory Cognitive Processing Shapes Affective Evaluation

Cognition and affect are closely intertwined: identifying a task-relevant object can elicit positive affect, and successfully solving the associated task can enhance it further. Beyond stimulus-driven processing, theories of proactive control and predictive coding suggest that task-related cognition already unfolds before stimulus onset. We propose that such preparatory processes shape affective responses to task completion. In preregistered Experiment 1, participants categorized digit pairs as either "match" (e.g., 3 and 3) or "sequence" (e.g., 3 and 4). Affective responses were assessed via affective priming. Surveys indicated that most participants prepared for matches ("match seekers"), thus implicitly recoding sequences to "no match." As predicted, correct responses to matches were faster and more positively valenced than responses to sequences. This pattern reversed for the subsample that prepared for sequences ("sequence seekers"). When participants were asked to categorize digits by color-which rendered preparatory processing for matches or sequences task-irrelevant-no affective differences emerged. In Experiment 2, we manipulated preparatory processing via instructions and response categories. Again, match seekers showed an affective advantage for matches, sequence seekers for sequences. Taken together, our findings imply that to understand affective responses to task completions, it is imperative to understand the preparatory processes the performer engaged in.