Fear and happiness, but not sadness, motivate attentional flexibility: A case for emotion influencing the ability to split foci of attention.

Abstract

One prominent and consistent effect is that negative emotions with high motivational intensity, such as fear, narrow attention. However, recent data concerning how fear influences vision may suggest that fear could make attention flexible. Thus, the goal of the present study was to examine whether fear, like happiness, enhances attentional flexibility when multiple targets are present in noncontiguous locations. Fear, happiness, or sadness was induced followed by participants completing an attentional task that required splitting foci of attention to noncontiguous regions of space in the presence (Exp. 1) or absence (Exp. 2) of distractors or both (Exp. 3). Fear and happiness enhanced the reporting of targets in unattended locations demonstrating greater attentional flexibility. Sadness facilitated the splitting of attention through the suppression of irrelevant locations. The effects were replicated in a third experiment using a within-subjects design of distractor presence and an inclusion of a neutral condition. Taken together, results suggest fear and happiness increase attentional flexibility by impairing the suppression of irrelevant locations, which may allow for faster reallocation of attention facilitating detection of potential threats/rewards in one's environment. (PsycINFO Database Record

Finding a balance: modulatory effects of positive affect on attentional and cognitive control

“…Attentional control enables the selection of relevant information and the suppression of irrelevant distractor information. According to the broaden and build theory [30,31], positive affect can change this information selection through a gain in the attentional scope, that is, broadened attention, whereby a larger portion of the visual field is attended [32][33][34][35][36]. Interestingly, there seems to be a trade-off whereby this gain is compensated by increased distractibility.…”

Fear in the COVID-19 Pandemic and its Correlates: A Comparison between Students with Sensory Disabilities and without in Beijing

“…Because depression has an impact on the affective and cognitive reactivity of individuals (Guhn, Sterzer, Haack, & Köhler, 2018). Negative emotions with high motivational intensity allow for faster reallocation of attention facilitating detection of potential threats/rewards in one's environment (Storbeck, Dayboch, & Wylie, 2019). Thus, the depressed and the non-depressed people must have some different references to perceive the deadly pandemic.…”

Fear during pandemic promoted holistic cognitive style: The moderating role of uncertainty.

“…Susskind et al (2008) indicated that when danger was not clearly presented, individuals’ attention was flexible and they searched effectively in peripherical areas. The work of Storbeck et al (2019), meanwhile, pointed out an inconsistency with regard to the link between fear and attention breadth being caused by differences in paradigms, specifically, whether or not the paradigm contained a single clear threatening stimulus (e.g., Finucane, 2011). Storbeck et al (2019) adopted the paradigm with multiple targets in noncontiguous locations.…”

“…However, fear, as a negative emotion, has also been found to facilitate agile attention that shifts across multiple locations. Storbeck et al (2019) showed that the relationship between fear and attention may be situation-dependent (e.g., whether the danger is certain or not). Thus, there is evidence that points to the alternative possibility that fear is also able to broaden one's visual field.…”