To what extent does distress influence attentional bias towards negative and positive emotions?

Table of contents

Introduction

Key terms and theory of distress and attentional bias

Attentional bias under conditions of distress towards negative emotion

Attentional bias under conditions of distress towards positive emotion

Discussion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The term „stress” was introduced to the world by Hans Selye who in 1974 divided this phenomenon into two categories: „positive” eustress and „negative” distress. Since positive meaning of stress is a relatively new concept, there is not a lot of research on this subject. For this reason, my essay is focused on distress that has been analyzed meticulously for many years.

„...a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”- these words said by Herbert Simon perfectly show the contemporary reality. People try to focus on and process a huge amount of information simultaneously to be productive and meet expectations. Additionally, stress has taken a permanent place in people’s lives which is commonly believed to have a solely negative meaning and a detrimental impact on human bodies.

Besides distress, this paper delves also into a cognitive bias called attentional bias, the presence of which has been confirmed by the well-known Stroop task. Scientists have discovered that there is occurrence of attentional bias towards distress, that is towards negative or threatening stressors (Bar-Haim et al., 2007). More specifically, it was suggested that attentional bias is closely linked and dependent on distress. This piece of information encouraged me to start my investigation and as a result, the following research question was formulated: „To what extent does distress influence attentional bias towards negative and positive emotions?”

The topic is worth investigating because both distress and attentional bias concern every person in the world since nobody’s cognition is unbiased and everyone has experienced distress.

The effects of this bias are usually imperceptible in everyday life but it does not mean that they can be ignored. Even though attentional bias could be favorable to our ancestors, as it would improve survival chances, nowadays it rather has a negative meaning. Several professions are particularly valuable to attentional bias. The most suitable example is the job of commercial pilots that is one of the most responsible professions in the world as well as rich with distress. What is more, in this occupation the occurrence of attentional bias leads to the most serious consequences, as there were many tragic air disasters where this bias played a major role (Bell, M., Facci, E. and Nayeem, R., 2005). The importance of my subject is significant because of the implications of what attentional bias can lead to and the possibility of gaining knowledge, and thus improving the understanding of the whole issue.

This paper is divided into two main sections. The first part talks about the attentional bias under conditions of distress towards negative emotion, whereas the second one towards positive emotion. Every part consists of pieces of literature that confront each other so the research is more objective and transparent. Besides that, general theory as well as key terms are explained. The paper concludes that there is a considerable impact of distress on attentional bias, especially towards negative emotional material, however, more research into the concept of positive emotion is recommended.

Key terms and theory of distress and attentional bias

Attentional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the hyper attention paid to a particular material(s) in the environment while simultaneously ignoring or overlooking what can have even larger significance at a particular moment. The bias is especially likely to happen when an individual is exposed to an emotional stimuli but there is a debate whether this statement truly reflects reality and this research elucidates it.

As mentioned in the introduction, attentional bias can occur under conditions of distress and this is the next key term. Every definition that contains the word „stress” in itself is broad and difficult to explain in several sentences. Distress has a multitude of different definitions but the majority of them describe it as a „state of emotional suffering” (e.g. Arvidsdotter et al., 2016) that has a detrimental effect on human organisms. It appears when a person starts being overwhelmed by problems, traumatic events, etc. Distress is a negative stress response that is caused by negative stressors that cannot be listed or defined because their form depends on personal concerns.

According to the APA (American Psychological Association), distress can be put in line with the general word „stress”, therefore in this paper these words are used interchangeably. The last issue that needs to be clarified is that this paper refers to studies that were carried out both on distressed and anxious participants. I am aware that terms "distress" and „anxiety" are not the same but the scientists commonly apply these terms interchangeably in their papers. It may be because their direct cause is not known. According to the ADAA (Anxiety and Depression Association of America) anxiety is a reaction to distress, so using these terms at the same time is acceptable. Moreover, many other sources predicate that these two terms are closely linked with each other. Distress and anxiety both involve negative reactions, so the legitimacy of using these terms interchangeably in my paper is justified.

The connectionist model of attentional bias and distress is described using the example of the Emotional Stroop Test, which is the most common method used in this area.

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Picture 1. A picture showing the mechanism of attentional bias under distress conditions (Matthews, G. and Harley, T., 1996).

The net consists of 9 input units (2 of them represent colors, the next 4 represent semantic features, and the last 3 - task demand units), 6 hidden units, and 5 output units. Four input units were presented as semantic features for two main reasons. Primarily, certain publications suggested that the production of a single word is a two-stage process. The first one involves the retrieval and transfer of lexical information from semantic features to hidden units, whereas the next stage refers to paths to output units. However, the “threat monitoring” task demand input unit plays a major role here. It activates the verbal pathways at both hidden and output levels, disrupting color-naming abilities and giving a possibility to model the interference effects linked to distress, or even phobias.

Attentional bias under conditions of distress towards negative emotion

One of the studies that showed how distress influences the attentional bias when a stressor is negative aimed to determine the influence of distress on attentional bias to threat stimuli, which, in this experiment, had a form of angry faces (Rued et al., 2018). Firstly, the participants were presented a black dot-fixation point that was followed by a display of happy, neutral, and threatening expressions. When a participant responded, the screen went blank and a moment later a new trial started. The attendees were exposed to high and low distress levels during the experiment. The results showed that for both high and low distress levels the participants were faster and more precise in responding when the target was an angry face compared to when they responded to neutral and happy targets. Nevertheless, the ability to detect threatening stimuli was larger at higher distress levels. Based on these results, the study supports the presence of the so-called anger superiority effect that was well-explained in the 20th century (Hansen, C. And Hansen, R., 1988) and confirms that attentional threat advantage increases with the level of distress. The main conclusion was that the higher level of distress, the more intense attentional bias towards threatening stimuli.

However, the study had several limitations. There was a risk that the bursts of noise that was used to stress participants could damage their hearing. Admittedly, the noise was kept on the upper acceptable boundary but it would be much safer if the noise had less than 100 decibels. Moreover, the researchers did not use the images of real faces, which significantly decreased the ecological validity of the findings. The majority of the data was numerical. Even the questionnaires contained a numerical scale so the participants could not describe in their own words how stressed they felt.

As a result, some important information could have been overlooked. The last issue is that the study researched only one sense-sight, however, the research carried out by Carlson, Conger, and Sterr in 2018 extended the investigation by combining both visual and auditory stimuli. The paper aimed to verify whether auditory distress signals coupled with fearful facial expressions enhance the capture of attention and it was examined using a dot-probe task. Fifty eight participants had to press the appropriate button after seeing a dot followed by a display of neutral and fearful faces. During the display of faces, participants heard human distress and non-distress sounds. Some trials did not involve any noise. The results were consistent with the researchers’ hypothesis; participants were faster when they were exposed to distress sound, and when the dot was on the same side as previously displayed fearful face. Additionally, the reaction time was slower when non-distress sounds were used and the slowest when there were silent conditions. These results formed a linear trend suggesting that the more stressful a particular sound is, the more attention is directed towards negative stimuli, so the participants responded faster under this condition. Although these findings are satisfying, they are not universal. It is still unknown how the results would look if the study had involved also happy faces and happy sounds. It would have been also noteworthy if the researchers had involved different durations of both stimuli and sounds. Consequently, Bradley et al. (2010) was a study that consulted the duration of stimulus and involved three types of facial expressions in the procedure. Eighty seven students were recruited and later divided into low and high trait anxiety groups. In a modified dot-probe task they were presented with a stimulus, the duration of which was equal to either 500 ms or 1250 ms. The obtained results and conclusions were interesting and thought-provoking. It turned out that reaction times did not vary significantly over time intervals in both groups. However, there was a difference between groups in a 500 ms interval whereas in the case of a 1250 ms interval the differences were not significant. It suggests that attentional bias is the most intense at a shorter duration of the stimulus and that the chances of maintaining it decrease over time. What is more, the analyzed data contradicts the thesis whereby threat-related attentional bias can be applied to all emotional material, including positive information that in this study did not show the same trend as the negative one. On the contrary, the data showed that attention towards positive information shifted away and that negative stimuli captured most of the attention. However, these conclusions are only suggestions. To confirm them, the study needs data from more time intervals and more anxiety levels. On the other hand, there is a piece of research in the scientific world that constitutes a strong counterclaim for all studies I have already mentioned. In 2017, six researchers published work suggesting that acute distress disrupts attentional bias to threatening stimuli (Jiang et al., 2017). Like in the previous studies, the dot-probe task was used and the participants were divided into three groups: high and low cortisol level group and a control group. Many measures were taken, such as heartbeat rate, ERP methods, or behavioral results to ensure that the study would give reliable results. When analyzing data, the researchers noticed that the control group was more accurate in congruent trials compared to incongruent trials, whereas two other groups where distress was present did not show this pattern. The researchers found several other patterns, typical for attentional bias, that could be seen in the control group but not in the low and high cortisol group. The conclusion was that distress impairs attentional bias to threat-related materials. The obvious strength of this study was that a multitude of methods was applied. Nevertheless, the results refer only to males, so they cannot be extrapolated to everyone. Moreover, the baseline attentional bias was not measured, therefore there is no information referring to individual differences and their impact on the results.

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