Psychologists believe that our emotional states have significant impacts or influence on our ability to be attentive. They suggest that there is a close relationship between people’s emotional responses and their cognitive abilities. Moreover, the emotional state of an individual enables their brain to develop stimuli that consequently allow them to respond appropriately to the environment. According to Brosch, Scherer, Grandjean and Sander (2013), emotions have an impact on us in that they determine our perceptions of the world, the way our memories are organized and the kind of decisions that we make. The reason for this state of affairs is that the human mind and the way it functions is such that there is a constant battle pitting various opposing forces, that is, deliberate, rational and reason vis-a-vis irrational, impulsive and emotional state of mind . This paper provides evidence, using anatomical and psychological studies and discusses the various ways through which attention is influenced by different emotional states.
Firstly, a study by Pessota, Pereira, and Oliveira (2010) indicates that emotion assists in shaping our brains’ information gathering and processing system in such a way that those items within our immediate environmental that are motivationally significant or relevant are brought to our attention. According to these authors, emotional states have an influence on attention in different ways. For example, they claim that negative emotions usually tend to make our action repertoires and thought to be narrow and that the same thing happens to our attention scope. Further, even though traditionally or previously considered to be two separate things, recent studies in psychology increasingly point to a closer link between perception and emotion. Furthermore, evidence that our emotional state affects the level of our attention is given to the fact that through emotional arousal, our attentions tend to be drawn towards things that are arousing in nature and ignore those that do not ( Brosch et el., 2013, p. 7). This happens due to the elements of orientation discrimination and fear. It is usually said that one cannot see the forest for the trees, and when we apply this to the emotional psychology of humans, we realize that our emotions influence the decision whether we focus on the trees or the forest. Also, the impact of emotions on attention has been explained by Rowe, Hirsch and Anderson (2007) regarding local or global bias. According to this author, an emotional state like happiness leads to a heightened global bias whereas sadness increases local prejudice. Using the Erikson flanker test, they found out that happiness broadens our visual-spatial attention to world features within our environment. Through this, they concluded that emotions have an effect on the scope of people’s visual attention. These findings are supported by Wegbeit, Franconeri and Beeman’s (2014) study that found that happy and sad moods affect our spatial concentrations differently.
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Our exogenous and endogenous attention is also influenced primarily by emotions when the brain detects a variety of stimuli and information that it chooses to process at the same time ( Pessoa, Pereira & Oliveira, 2010, p. 12). Hence, the most relevant information from the immediate environment will receive the attention of the mind first before others can. Through this process, the perception of the human body and its reaction to various stimuli that the human mind receives is responsible for the difference in attention. For instance, happiness as an emotional state is usually linked to flexible processing, the exogenous focus of attention, superficial processing, and distractibility. On the other hand, sadness is seen by many psychologists to contribute to endogenous or external attention focuses, lower reaction time and detail-oriented information processing. Thus, the various aspects and elements of care that do get affected by the emotional state of the mind include accuracy, reaction time, orienting effect, alert effect and conflict effect. It is also suggested that people’s ability to act out of different situations and in response to different environments is mostly affected by their emotional states. For instance, people more often than not do irrational things when they are emotionally triggered and while in certain states of emotion, some people are more alert and attentive than when in others.
Furthermore, emotion according to Phelps, Ling and Carrasco (2006) affects the people’s attention by influencing their cognitive abilities (p. 295). This is because there is a connection between the part of the human brain that responds to emotions and on that handles recognition of various stimuli in one’s surrounding. Thus, attention and emotion to a human behavioral scientist are intertwined and intimately linked together. The emotional state that one is in usually tends to influence their ability to perform tasks that require intensive concentration or selective stimuli. Emotions like sadness and ecstasy also affect an individual’s consciousness either positively or negatively, thus affecting their ability to remain attentive. Therefore, emotions affect how well we attend to certain things or people and also the kind of things to which we pay attention. According to the study by Phelps, Ling, and Carrasco (2006), emotional stimuli such as those evoking fear in people usually have the tendency to capture their attention faster than stimuli that are not sensitive in nature. In their study, these authors found out that when fear was included as part of the experience, the participants had to go, though, their ability to respond even without an emotional content was greatly enhanced, thus pointing to the link between emotional state and attention.
Moreover, previous studies on emotional states such as anxiety and their impacts on the attentiveness of the subjects have all shown that anxious people are more alert and attentive than those who are not. According to Barajas (2014), using the conceptual theory of positive affect, it has been shown that mild positive emotional states affect human cognitive processes and behavior in different ways. This impact of these emotions on the human cognitive ability translates into an influence on attention too. Positive emotions, unlike the negative emotions, tend to facilitate the human response to various stimuli within the environment due to the positive impact of these emotions on their faculties. Another theory that this author uses to justify the effects of emotions on the human state of mind and their ability to be attentive is the neuropsychological theory of positive affect. This works when participants are given rewards that make the brain release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that then makes them more attentive. Clore and Huntsinger’s (2007) work also seem to suggest that from cognitive psychology, being sad or happy has an influence on the style and content of thought and subsequently, on attention. This, they argue, may be explained by the fact that affect plays the role of providing our minds with information as to the value that we should attach to different situations, events, things and people around us. Hence, positive affect enables people to respond quickly to stimuli and stay attentive. Using Fredrickson’s n Broaden and Build Theory, these authors claim that positive emotions have the effect of producing an external focus of attention that allow us to pay more attention, for example, to relationship development and maintenance. This fact is also demonstrated when we listen to cool music that induces a positive mood in us and makes us more attentive due to the external or exogenous attention created. Also, emotional states such as sadness tend to produce some negative self-perception and evaluation process that lead to an increased or intense self-focused attention. A sad mood, unlike a happy one, makes us lose our self-worth or be uncertain about it hence making us aware that there is something wrong in the vicinity thus making us focus all our attention towards evaluating the wrong (Clore & Huntsinger, 2007, p. 394).
Conclusion
Emotion assists in shaping our brains’ information gathering and processing system in such a way that those items within our immediate environmental that are motivationally significant or relevant are brought to our attention.
Our exogenous and endogenous attention is also influenced primarily by emotions when the brain detects a variety of stimuli and information that it chooses to process at the same time.
Emotion influences cognitive abilities
Emotional states such as anxiety influence the attentiveness of the subjects
References
Barajas, M. S. (2014). Thinking and feeling: The influence of positive emotion on human cognition. The Hilltop Review, 7 (1), 1-11.
Brosch, T., Scherer, K. R., Grandjean, D., & Sander, D. (2013). The impact of emotion on perception, attention, memory, and decision-making. Swiss Medical Weekly: The European Journal of Medical Sciences, 143 , 1-10. doi:10.4414/smw.2013.13786
Clore, G. L., & Huntsinger, J. R. (2007). How emotions inform judgment and regulate thought. Trends in Cognitive Science, 11 (9), 393-399.
Pessoa, L., Pereira, M. G., & Oliveira, L. (2010). Attention and emotion. Scholarpedia Journal, 5 (2), 1-20. doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.6314
Phelps, E.A., Ling, S., & Carrasco, M. (2006). Emotion facilitates perception and potentiates the perceptual benefits of attention. Psychological Science Journal ,17(4), 292-299.
Rowe, G., Hirsh, J.B., & Anderson, A.K. (2007). Positive affect increases the breadth of attentional selection. PNAS, 104(1), 383-388. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0605198104.
Wegbeit, E. Franconeri, S., & Beeman, M. (2014). Anxious mood narrows attention in feature space.J ournal of Cognition and Emotion, 1 -9. Retrieved July 14, 2016, from http://viscog.psych.northwestern.edu/publications/WegbreitFranconeriBeeman_2014_Co gnitionEmotion.pdf
