Positive mood broadens visual attention to positive stimuli

Abstract

In an attempt to investigate the impact of positive emotions on visual attention within the context of Fredrickson's (1998) broaden-and-build model, eye tracking was used in two studies to measure visual attentional preferences of college students (n=58, n=26) to emotional pictures. Half of each sample experienced induced positive mood immediately before viewing slides of three similarlyvalenced images, in varying central-peripheral arrays. Attentional breadth was determined by measuring the percentage viewing time to peripheral images as well as by the number of visual saccades participants made per slide. Consistent with Fredrickson's theory, the first study showed that individuals induced into positive mood fixated more on peripheral stimuli than did control participants; however, this only held true for highly-valenced positive stimuli. Participants under induced positive mood also made more frequent saccades for slides of neutral and positive valence. A second study showed that these effects were not simply due to differences in emotional arousal between stimuli. Selective attentional broadening to positive stimuli may act both to facilitate later building of resources as well as to maintain current positive affective states. Keywords Positive mood; Visual attention Positive mood broadens visual attentionThe broaden-and-build model of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 1998) suggests that positive emotions, such as joy, interest, contentment, elation, or love, temporarily broaden an individual's thought-action repertoire, thereby promoting the expansion of attention or interest in the environment and encouraging play and exploration. In turn, these broadening behaviors build lasting resources such as physical agility, social relationships, and heightened psychological resilience. This stockpiling of resources and skills allow an organism to be better prepared for future circumstances in which they might face adverse conditions or negative affective states (Fredrickson, 1998(Fredrickson, , 2000a(Fredrickson, , 2001. The current study focused on testing the broadening component of the model, which has received relatively scant attention in previous research on the theory. Research demonstrating broadeningWhat exactly is broadening? Fredrickson (2000b, Article 7, 9) defines broadening as "having a wider array of perceptions, thoughts, and actions, with the consequences of broadening being flexible, creative and unusual thinking." Thus, research demonstrating broadening would show that positive emotions, as compared to negative or neutral emotions, act to expand thoughts or actions towards incorporating more aspects of one's environment. By having individuals watch © Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006 dmi@brandeis.edu . NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptMotiv Emot. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 April 28. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript short films, induced joy, serenity, fear, and sadness in individuals, and then had them perform a global-l...

Encouraging the perceptual underdog: Positive affective priming of nonpreferred local–global processes.

“…This process may also underlie the finding with eye-tracking that positive affect promotes increased attention to peripheral visual stimuli (Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2006).…”

Negative Emotional Stimuli Reduce Contextual Cueing but not Response Times in Inefficient Search

“…First, we investigate the effect of emotional stimuli on the processing of a displays' context (using a contextual cueing task) and second, we investigate the effect of emotional stimuli on response times using an inefficient visual search task. Taking the first point, previous research has suggested that negative emotions lead to diminished processing of peripheral items and a narrowing of attention (Easterbrook, 1959, Fenske and Eastwood, 2003, Fredrickson, 1998, Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2006, Wells & Matthews, 1994. This focussing or narrowing of attention could occur in a number of situations including inducing social stress (Sanders, Baron & Moore, 1978, Huguet et al, 1999, creating ego threatening and time pressured situations (Chajut & Algom, 2003), threatening participants with electric shocks (Watchel, 1968) and presenting people with faces demonstrating negative emotions (Fenske & Eastwood, 2003).…”

Motivated Cognition: Effects of Reward, Emotion, and Other Motivational Factors Across a Variety of Cognitive Domains

“…This parallel may be somewhat exaggerated, however, as emotion and reward are sometimes experimentally operationalized similarly, and thus would produce similar effects in behavior. Specifically, both emotion and reward are often studied using shocks (Bauch et al, 2014;Bisby & Burgess, 2014;Dunsmoor et al, 2015;Jensen et al, 2007;Murty et al, 2012Murty et al, , 2011Pessoa, 2009;Phelps & LeDoux, 2005;Redondo et al, 2014;Schmidt et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2013;Weiner & Walker, 1966), food (Beaver et al, 2006;de Water et al, 2017;Isen & Geva, 1987;LaBar et al, 2001;Polanía et al, 2015;Talmi et al, 2013;Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2006), emotional face pictures (Bradley et al, 1997;Lin et al, 2012;Tsukiura & Cabeza, 2008;Vrijsen et al, 2013;Vuilleumier & Schwartz, 2001;Woud et al, 2013), or erotic/sexual pictures (Attard-Johnson & Bindemann, 2017;Bradley et al, 2001;Ferrey et al, 2012;Hamann et al, 2004;Iigaya et al, 2016;Most et al, 2007;Sescousse et al, 2013aSescousse et al, , 2010. As such, it would be expected that both emotion and reward demonstrate similar effects on cognition, as they can be studied using nearly identical experimental designs.…”