Lecture 4: The Cognitive & Motivational Basis of Well-Being Flashcards
What is Attention?
State in which our cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than others, NS is in a state to respond to stimuli
What is selective attention?
ability to focus our attention on a particular stimulus or piece of info while ignoring other stimuli or info
Do we experience greater cognitive activity to negative events? why?
yes, capture more attentional resources, stored in memory in a more accessible manner
Why do we experience negativity bias?
Evolutionary explanation - those who has a neg bias would recognize neg events faster, they would live longer to reproduce
Neg events require more cognitive resources - we seem to have evolved a mechanism that allows as to devote more to cognitive resources
How do we know this?
Demonstated using attentional interference-based tasks
Compared to neutral stimuli, response time was longer for negative stimuli since they capture more attention and produce more attentional interference (stroop task, dot-probe task)
What is the stroop task?
shows individuals names of color words, either the word matches the color ink or is diff
Ask people to state the color of the ink - ppl are slow to do this bc the meaning of the word captures their attention first
Ppl are even slower when neg words are presented than neutral words, can’t jsut focus on the color of ink (Ex. cancer - color of ink is blue - will take longer to answer)
What is the Dot probe task?
One is a neutral stimulus (like neutral word) and an emotional stimulus like word or face
They will see 2 dots on either side, press L or R where the dots appear, they’re measuring reaction time.
Congruent trial - is when the probe is on the same side as the neg stimuli, people are faster at this
Incongruent trial - when the probe is on the opp side of the neg stimulus, ppl r slower bc they’re attenting to the neg stimulus
What is the affective simon task
Affective simon test - saying pos to a neg word produces more interference than saying neg to a pos word
Ex. say pos to capital words and neg to lower case words
MURDER - will take longer to say pos to this word
What is emotion priming?
Affective prime presented briefly followed by a target word (either consistent or inconsistent with prime)
categorize the target word as quickly as possible ignore the prime
neg prime should activate schemas which will help u categorize those words
- stronger bc ppl r faster at categorizing neg words
What is the Global-local task
- shown 2 stimuli, ask which matches the stimuli
- squares arranges as a triangle is global aspect
- some may be focused on the individual stimulus itself, detail local aspect
- participants in the neg mood = likely to choose the local stimulus
- participants in the pos mood = likely to choose the global stimulus
What is the relationship between selective attention and satisfaction
People with high life satisfaction (LS) are bias in recalling the good things in their past
Availability heuristic - if it’s easy for u to bring good memories to mind, u infer that life is going well and good things happen to u all the time
What did sanchez and Vasquez find?
Eye gaze was tracked during the task, both PA and LS predicted attention to faces
- LS predicted PA
- PA predicted more elaborate attention
What is categorization (Appraisal)?
SWB plays a role in how we assign meaing to stimuli
What is re-categorization (re-appraisal)?
Finding meaning in neg events associated with hgher well-being
Re-interpretation of neg events to reduce the initial neg emotion and form a more pos attitude toward the event
What is conitive restructuring? Give examples
Many cognitive psychotherapies assume that cognition is at the root of mental ill-being
Cognitive behavioural therapy
minfulness (awareness of the present moment0
decentering (feelings as objective)
cognitive defusion (letting thoughts come & go)
acceptance (recognition)
