Humans and other biological agents seem to be inclined to generate motor activities that result in foreseeable and immediate perceptual effects, although neither the motor activities nor the ensuing perceptual effects themselves appear particularly attractive. While the reasons for this preference are yet unclear, the current research suggests that episodes in which motor activities produce predicted perceptual events come with positive affect. Using affective priming, participante first carried out actions that produced expected or unexpected effects. Shortly after, participants categorized probe words as positive or negative. Results suggest that expected effects come with positive affect and unexpected events come with negative affect, which in turn modulates the performance in the affective probe task. These results scrutinize the role of affective evaluation in the generation of, and possible preference for, specific action-effect relationships, and thus lead to a deeper understanding of how affective and cognitive processes jointly govern action control.