Limitations of the motivational intensity model of attentional tuning: reply to Harmon-Jones, Gable, and Price (2011)

In an integrative review, we concluded that implicit affective cues—rudimentary stimuli associated with the onset of arousing positive or negative emotional states and/or with appraisals that the environment is benign or threatening—automatically moderate the scope of attention (Friedman & Förster, 2010). In their comment, Harmon-Jones, Gable, and Price (2011) contended that their own recent research, aimed at demonstrating that motivational intensity moderates the relationship between affective state and attentional tuning, requires a tempering of our conclusions. However, Harmon-Jones et al. portrayed these conclusions neither accurately nor comprehensively and offered an insufficient critical assessment of their own competing account. More important, they failed to establish a compelling alternative explanation for the multitude of specific findings we reviewed (Friedman & Förster, 2010). Therefore, although the work of Harmon-Jones et al. is provocative, it leaves critical issues unresolved and does not yet demand a reconsideration of either our basic assumptions or our overall conclusions.