When the Going Gets Tough, Your Focus Might Keep You Going

We are living in very uncertain times, experiencing numerous emotions every day. We feel happy because our relatives are safe and healthy, sad because the coronavirus is still not disappearing, or angry when new restrictions are imposed and our freedom needs to be limited for the greater good.

How could all of these emotions—positive and negative—influence how we deal with information? Will they cause us to attend to only a limited number of cues around us (thus narrow our attention) or will they make us more receptive to numerous cues (thus broadening the attention)?

There is much to learn about how different emotions impact how we pay attention to information. One account states that positive emotions broaden the attentional scope, while negative emotions narrow it. But what might complicate things further is that sometimes we are motivated to seek out positive things, while other times we are hoping to avoid negative things, and this, too, could influence how we pay attention.

The Role of Gains and Losses

A really simple real-life manifestation of both positive and negative emotions is that, as humans, we are motivated to seek gains and avoid losses. Think about how great it is to win money, and how awful it is to lose it. Our studies used this kind of experience to explore the connection between monetary gains and losses and human attention—with gains being closely related to positive emotions (yay, money!) and losses to negative emotions (what a bummer!).

We invited our college student participants to play a simple game. Some could earn money in each round (gains). Others had to try not to lose money given to them beforehand (losses). Each time, we measured their attention scope when they were anticipating likely gains or losses, or after they experienced either gains or losses.

How Could We Measure “Attention Scope”?

For this, participants were shown big alphabet letters composed of small letters (for instance, a big letter ‘A’ composed of many small letters ‘E’), and we asked them to name as quickly and as accurately as possible either the big letter (‘A’) or the small letter (‘E’). Quickly naming the ‘A’ means participants were looking at the whole image (broadened attention), while quickly naming the ‘E’ shows they were focusing in on the details of the image (narrowed attention).

As expected, we got different results for gains versus losses. People anticipating gains had a narrower attentional scope but it broadened for those who have already experienced additional gains (money, that is). The pattern reversed for losses, with people having a broader scope when anticipating losses, but a narrowed scope after experiencing losses.

Interestingly, our findings fit with what’s known about the defensive behavior of animals. That research shows that when facing a threat in the environment, the animal broadens its attentional scope so they can pinpoint the exact source of threat. Then, when the threat is identified, the fight or flight response becomes activated, narrowing attention.

These findings map onto our results for losses. When losses are anticipated and uncertain, the broad attentional scope should help prevent losses from happening. In contrast, narrower attentional scope after the loss should assist in deciding how to act, when more focus is needed.

People anticipate and experience negative emotional states on countless occasions in their lives. They wait for the results of exams, they are anxious before their next job interview, they worry that their presentation at work is not going to be successful. In the current pandemic, these negative emotions are even more pronounced, for instance, while waiting for the results of a COVID test or anticipating monetary losses due to lockdown regulations.

We show that in such states, attentional scope broadens. As a result, there is a possibility of being more influenced by the cues in the environment, and making impulsive choices triggered by the abundance of stimuli we are exposed to every day. Conversely, after experiencing such states, people’s attention narrows down, which should help them to get up again and continue their daily pursuits with more focus.

As the saying goes: ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ With our research, we demonstrate that when things are tough, our focused attention might help us keep going.


For Further Reading

Gable, P. A., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2011). Attentional consequences of pregoal and postgoal positive affects. Emotion, 11(6), 1358–1367. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025611

Harmon-Jones, E., Gable, P. A., & Price, T. F. (2013). Does negative affect always narrow and positive affect always broaden the mind? Considering the influence of motivational intensity on cognitive scope. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 301–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413481353

Sadowski, S., Fennis, B. M., & van Ittersum, K. (2020). Losses tune differently than gains: How gains and losses shape attentional scope and influence goal pursuit. Cognition and Emotion34(7), 1439-1456. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1760214

 

Sebastian Sadowski is an Assistant Professor in Persuasive Communication at the Center for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen. His research examines the impact of subtle environmental cues on judgment and decision-making.

 

More Than a Glance: Understanding Others Better by Paying More Attention to Them

When we meet someone for the first time, we often find ourselves trying to understand their personality—how kind, reliable, or smart they are, for example. Being able to grasp someone’s personality correctly is very important, helping us make decisions about who to befriend, date, or hire—and who to avoid. However, figuring out what other people are like is often difficult, and a single glance is rarely sufficient. Are there strategies we can use to enhance our success at understanding other people?

One approach might be to start paying closer attention to others—to simply look at them more. Visual attention is essential to understanding our surroundings. By looking carefully around us, we can notice important details and events that we might otherwise overlook. This is as true in the social world as it is when we look at our physical surroundings.  When dealing with other people, attention helps us perceive many important nonverbal cues about their behaviors, intentions, and feelings. Thus, we suspected that simply paying more attention to other people might enhance people’s ability to form more accurate impressions of others’ personalities. 

To test our idea, we asked research participants to form impressions of the personalities of individuals they did not know by watching a brief video-recorded interview of them. We assessed participants’ attention using eye-tracking equipment that allowed us to measure the movement of participants’ eyes. So, this procedure allowed us to know where the participants were looking in the video at every point in time. For example, we could tell when they were looking at the interviewee’s eyes, mouth, or body, or at other objects in the room.

We measured the accuracy of participants’ personality impressions by comparing their ratings of the other person on a personality questionnaire with the answers that the interviewee and their friends gave on that same questionnaire. The more similar the participant’s ratings of the other person were to how the person and their friends had rated them, the more accurate their personality impressions.

Does looking more at a person help us to form a more accurate impression of their personality? Our results confirmed this intuition: the more that participants looked at the interviewees, the more accurate the impression of their personalities. Interestingly, it did not matter where the participant looked: paying more attention to any part of the person—their eyes, mouth, or torso—contributed to greater accuracy. Thus, paying more attention to a person generally helps us understand their personality better.

Importantly, this improvement in accuracy did not depend on the degree to which interviewees naturally expressed their personalities. Some people are ‘easy to read’ in the sense that they express their personality by conveying clear cues about themselves, while other peole are harder to read. To test whether these differences affected the benefit of paying attention in forming accurate impressions, we divided the interviewees into two groups: a group of interviewees who were ‘easy to read’ and a group of interviewees who were ‘hard to read’.

Interestingly, we found a few differences in how participants looked at easy-to-read versus harder-to-read interviewees.  For example, participants looked more at interviewees who were easy-to-read, especially at their eyes. This may happen because we often perceive people who are easier to read as more engaging, so we tend to pay more attention to them.

However, these differences did not affect the accuracy of participants’ impressions of their personalities. Looking more at interviewees improved accuracy whether the interviewees were easy or hard to read. Paying more attention to a person improves our ability to understand their personality regardless of their ability to express themselves.

So, the more we pay attention to other people, the better we can understand their personality. Therefore, when a glance is not sufficient to understand the personality of someone, start paying more attention to them.


For Further Reading

Capozzi F., Ristic J. (2018). How attention gates social interactions. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1426, 179-198, DOI: 10.1111/nyas.13854

Human L., Biesanz J. (2013) Targeting the good target: An integrative review of the characteristics and consequences of being accurately perceived. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 248-272. DOI: 10.1177/1088868313495593

 

Francesca Capozzi is a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University. Her research focuses on social attention and nonverbal communication during social interactions.

Lauren Human is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Social Perception and Expression in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of accurate interpersonal impressions.

Jelena Ristic is an Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. Her research focuses on understanding the role of attention in human social behavior.

 

Five Things to Know About Clapping

Clapping, an often-overlooked behavior, is so pervasive that it can be likened to yawning, smiling, and laughing—a ubiquitous part of daily life. But you may never have given it deep thought. I will delve into five intriguing insights about this seemingly simple act.

Clapping and Applauding Are Two Separate Things

Usually used as synonyms, they are different. Clapping is the action of open hands colliding to compress and explode a small air bubble between palms—mainly to produce a characteristic sound. Clapping in itself has no connotations about its meaning, as it's an objective description of the action. Clapping can capture attention, convey specific messages like "hurry up," or contribute to maintaining a rhythm.

On the other hand, applause is when the claps carry specific meanings, just as certain stylized hand movements do, such as the "thumbs up" or "okay" signs. These gestures, called emblems, are culturally understood and can be translated into words or phrases. Applauding is a conscious and deliberate action, and typically it conveys specific messages of approval, congratulations, or positive recognition.

The Origins of Clapping

The evolutionary origins of clapping remain shrouded in mystery, leaving us to ponder several possibilities.

  • It may have emerged as an audible behavior that redirects peers' attention, signaling something worthy of notice, whether positive or negative.
  • Clapping could represent a playful and enthusiastic non-aggressive movement akin to the "play face" observed in particular primates.
  • It might serve as a display of threat or dominance, using powerful sounds and providing cues about hand size and, by extension, the individual's strength.
  • Clapping could function as a means of expressing affiliation from a distance, akin to a pseudo hug.
  • Clapping may have originated as a way to foster a sense of collective belonging, with the synchronized act of clapping promoting a feeling of group unity.

These explanations are all plausible, and the true origin of clapping likely encompasses elements from all of these.

Clapping May Express Your Identity

The pioneering work of Bruno Repp brought evidence that the sound produced when clapping may be unique to each individual, similar to the distinctive vocal tract sounds that can identify a person's voice. Clapping, like talking, offers a distinctive type of information about the configuration of specific movements in a given moment. Since the vocal tract sounds may convey sufficient audible information to identify a person, could this be the case for clapping also? Two subsequent studies found that algorithms could be trained to detect the spectral changes in the sound of claps and, as a result, achieve a good enough recognition rate.

Clapping Can Coordinate the Simultaneous Behavior of Thousands of Individuals

As exotic as it sounds, clapping sounds are as contagious as a disease. They go from one person to another, synchronizing between unknown persons like fire in the forest. While the factors influencing clapping "contagion," such as culture, audience, show type, and timing, are manifold, clapping's power of imitation and synchrony is rivaled only by the famous "Mexican wave" phenomenon seen in stadiums. Studies have shown that people can easily coordinate their claps, but replicating such coordination with jumps is considerably more challenging. Undoubtedly, clapping is an extraordinary behavior.

Claps May Be Used Strategically: From Intimidation to Influence

Throughout history, those in positions of power have recognized the significant social impact that clapping can have. Fascinating historical accounts reveal the strategic use of clapping to manipulate perceptions and exert influence. For instance, Emperor Heraclius of the Roman Empire orchestrated a meeting with a barbarian king, enlisting hired spectators to clap, to instill a sense of intimidation in his adversaries. Similarly, Emperor Nero famously employed the tactic of paying over 5,000 individuals to applaud him vigorously during public events, creating an illusion of widespread support.

Over time, the concept of "claques" emerged, with theater managers hiring paid applauders to enhance the audience experience. Even in the realm of television, canned applause tracks have been employed to heighten the perceived audience response. In the present day, clapping remains an integral part of sports culture, with fans using it to demonstrate their unwavering support for their favorite teams and players. In team sports, such as football, clapping also serves the additional purpose of intimidating rival teams, creating an electrifying atmosphere for home fans.

To Sum Up

Clapping and applause are universally recognized actions that usually convey positive social messages across cultures worldwide. While the precise origin of clapping remains a mystery, several hypotheses offer insights into its possible beginnings. Fascinatingly, clapping has the potential to reveal one's identity through the unique sound each individual produces. Moreover, clapping possesses an extraordinary ability to swiftly forge a sense of synchronicity among strangers, uniting thousands of individuals in a collective experience. Notably, clapping also holds a remarkable power to evoke intimidation and influence over others. Its resounding impact cannot be understated.


For Further Reading

Crawley, A. (2023). Clap, clap, clap—Unsystematic review essay on clapping and applause. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09786-9

Repp, B. H. (1987). The sound of two hands clapping: An exploratory study. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 81(4), 1100–1109. doi: 10.1121/1.394630


Alan Crawley is a psychologist specializing in nonverbal communication and is a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Video Games Boost Visual Attention But Reduce Impulse Control

A person playing a first-person shooter video game like Halo or Unreal Tournament must make decisions quickly. That fast-paced decision-making, it turns out, boosts the player's visual skills but comes at a cost, according to new research: reducing the person's ability to inhibit impulsive behavior. This reduction in what is called "proactive executive control" appears to be yet another way that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior.
 
"We believe that any game that requires the same type of rapid responding as in most first-person shooters may produce similar effects on proactive executive control, regardless of violent content,” says Craig Anderson, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University. "However, this is quite speculative,” he warns. But what is not so speculative is the growing body of research that links violent video games – and to a certain extent, total screen time – to attention-related problems and, ultimately, to aggression.
 
People's ability to override aggressive impulses is dependent in large part on good executive control capacity, as will be presented at a symposium at the American Psychological Association (APA) annual meting in Honolulu. And social psychologists are looking how a variety of factors – including media exposure, anger, and alcohol – affect that capability. Two types of cognitive control processes play a large role: proactive and reactive. "Proactive cognitive control involves keeping information active in short-term memory for use in later judgments, a kind of task preparation,” Anderson explains. "Reactive control is more of a just-in-time type of decision resolution.”
 
In three new, unpublished studies, Anderson and colleagues found that playing action video games is associated with better visuospatial attention skills, but also with reduced proactive cognitive control. "These studies are the first to link violent video game play with both beneficial and harmful effects within the same study,” Anderson says.
 
In one of the studies, Anderson's team had participants – none of whom were frequent gamers – either play the fast-paced and violent video game Unreal Tournament (2004), the slow-paced game Sims 2, or nothing for 10 sessions, each 50 minutes long over the course of 11 weeks. His team tested the participants' proactive cognitive control and visual attention before and after the video game playing. They found marked decreases in proactive cognitive control among the action game players versus the Sims players or non-game players. At the same time, there were marked increases in the visual attention skills of action gamers. 
 
In another study, Anderson and Edward Swing, also of Iowa State University, assessed the TV and video game habits of 422 people to further examine the links between screen time and attention-related problems and aggression. In keeping with past research in this area, they found that total media exposure and violent media exposure both contributed directly to attention problems. Violent media exposure had a direct association with greater aggression and anger/hostility, while total media exposure was not significantly related to aggression or anger/hostility.
 
The analyses looked at both premeditated and impulsive aggression. "Impulsive aggression, by definition, is aggressive behavior that occurs automatically, or almost automatically, without evidence of any inhibition or thought about whether it should be carried out,” Anderson says. They found significant links between both types of aggression and attention problems, although the link between attention and premeditated aggression was weaker than the link between attention and impulsive aggression. "This is theoretically consistent with the idea that attention problems interfere with people's ability to inhibit inappropriate impulsive behavior,” Anderson says.
 
Most screen media – TV, movies, video games – are fast paced and essentially train the brain to respond quickly to rapid changes in images and sounds, Anderson says. Violent video games, in particular, are designed to require quick response to changes on the screen. "What such fast-paced media fail to train is inhibiting the almost automatic first response,” he says. "This is the essence of ADD, ADHD, and measures of impulsivity,” and he says, "that's why attention problems are more strongly related to impulsive aggression than to premeditated aggression.”
 
Anderson is chairing the symposium "Attentional and Cognitive Advances in Understanding Anger and Anger Regulation,” which is part of the programming of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) at the APA meeting. Other researchers in the session today will present a variety of other studies, including work showing that even people who are intoxicated can direct attention away from aggressive stimuli provided they possess good working memory capacity and work that reveals some of the cognitive processes involved in regulated anger.
 
"This symposium illustrates the diversity and complexity of factors that influence cognitive control in the context of anger, anger regulation, and aggression,” Anderson says. "Ultimately, such research will help us to understand how to improve anger regulation through use of various executive control processes.”