No Correlation Between Mood or Motivation and the Processing of Global and Local Information

Mood has been argued to impact the breadth of human attention, but the empirical evidence supporting this claim remains shaky. Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008) have attributed previous empirical inconsistencies regarding the effect of mood on attentional breath to a critical role of approach/avoidance motivation. They demonstrated that the combination of positive affect with high, but not with low, motivational intensity improves performance during processing local information and impairs performance during processing global information. The latter, but not the former, was replicated by Domachowska et al. (2016). Since we were interested in the modulation of attention by valence and motivation, and considering the inconsistencies in the findings, we replicated the critical experiments of both studies in four online experiments but found no significant effect of either valence or motivational intensity on attention. Taken together, our evidence casts doubt on a systematic relationship between mood or motivation on the one hand and global/local processing on the other.

Automated summary

This article discusses the impact of mood on the breadth of human attention, with a focus on the effects of positive affect and motivational intensity on processing local and global information. However, through replication of critical experiments in four online studies, the research found that mood and motivation do not have a significant effect on attention.