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.
