Effects of induced and naturalistic mood on the temporal allocation of attention to emotional information

Abstract

Building upon recent findings that affective states can influence the allocation of spatial attention, we investigate how state, trait and induced mood are related to the temporal allocation of attention to emotional information. In the present study, 125 unscreened undergraduates completed a modified rapid serial visual presentation task designed to assess the time course of attention to positive and negative information, comparing a neutral baseline mood induction to either a positive or negative mood induction. Induced negative mood facilitated attentional engagement to positive information while decreasing attentional engagement to negative information. Greater naturally occurring negative state mood was associated with faster or more efficient disengagement of attention from negative information in the presence of manipulated negative mood, relative to baseline. The engagement findings were inconsistent with our mood-congruence hypotheses and may be better explained by mood repair or affective counter-regulation theories. In contrast, the disengagement findings for state mood were somewhat consistent with our mood-congruence hypotheses. The relationship between mood and attention to emotional information may differ depending on the combination of attentional mechanism (engagement versus disengagement), aspect of mood (state, trait or induced), stimulus valence (positive versus negative) and timescale (early versus late) under investigation.

Keywords:

• Attention
• Mood
• Mood induction
• Mood repair
• Associative networks

We thank Marvin Chun, Marcia Johnson, and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema for providing instrumental feedback on the experimental design and early drafts of this manuscript.

We thank Marvin Chun, Marcia Johnson, and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema for providing instrumental feedback on the experimental design and early drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Stimuli are available upon request from the first author.

² The following images from the IAPS were used: Neutral BL: 5740, 7000, 7004, 7006, 7010, 7020, 7025, 7030, 7031, 7035, 7040, 7041, 7050, 7055, 7080, 7090, 7110, 7140, 7150, 7175, 7179, 7217, 7224; Positive, high-arousal MI: 4001, 4002, 4141, 4142, 4180, 4220, 4225, 4235, 4250, 4300, 4310, 4311, 4608, 4647, 4651, 4652, 4658, 4659, 4660, 4670, 5621, 8030, 8080; Negative, high-arousal MI: 1050, 1300, 2730, 2811, 3000, 3010, 3030, 3060, 3068, 3071, 3080, 3110, 3130, 3170, 3400, 3500, 3530, 6260, 6370, 6550, 8485, 9250, 9252.

³ Pre-MI negative affect exhibited extreme positive skew (z = 8.62) and restricted range. On a subscale that can range from 10 to 50, 27.4% of participants had total scores of 10 (the subscale minimum), and 73.5% of participants had total scores ≤ 13. Because such extreme restriction of range would yield very low statistical power, the PANAS-NA at Time 2 was excluded from the present analyses.