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Attention allocation and habituation to anger‐related stimuli during a visual search task
Author(s) -
Cohen Dale J.,
Eckhardt Christopher I.,
Schagat Klaus D.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
aggressive behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.223
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1098-2337
pISSN - 0096-140X
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1098-2337(1998)24:6<399::aid-ab1>3.0.co;2-i
Subject(s) - anger , psychology , habituation , mood , arousal , attentional bias , cognition , trait , cognitive psychology , poison control , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , neuroscience , medicine , environmental health , computer science , programming language
A substantial amount of data has accumulated demonstrating that emotionally disordered subjects are prone to bias their attention toward threatening, emotionally relevant stimuli. Little attention has been reserved for the study of cognitive processes involved in anger arousal. In the present study, we investigated whether mood‐congruent attentional biases could be demonstrated in subjects of varying levels of trait anger using a visual search task. This task also assessed whether mood‐congruent biases diminished with repeated exposure to specific emotion stimuli. To investigate state‐trait interaction effects, a naturalistic, anger‐inducing insult was administered to half the subjects. There was a positive relation between participants' level of trait anger and their degree of mood‐congruent attentional bias toward anger‐related cues only after an insult. As predicted, this effect diminished across blocks of trials. Aggr. Behav. 24:399–409, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.