Are sadness and fear blessings in disguise? Study says they can reduce distraction
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Emotions and behavioural patterns are closely connected. In a recent study titled ‘Sadness and fear, but not happiness, motivate inhibitory behaviour: the influence of discrete emotions on the executive function of inhibition’, authored by Justin Storbeck, Jennifer L Stewart, and Jordan Wylie, it was observed that negative emotions have a significant impact on self-control. Earlier studies have observed the impact of positive emotions on cognitive flexibility and exploration, such as attention, problem-solving, and inhibition.
Findings of the study
The study observed how emotions help in executing functions related to achieving specific goals. One of the experiments of the study involved 141 participants who were exposed to one of the images inducing fear, sadness, happiness or neutral. Then they were assigned tasks to be completed. The findings demonstrated that people exposed to sadness or fear-related images showed higher accuracy in their tasks, because of reduced distractions.
In another experiment, 154 participants were divided based on the emotions – sadness, fear, happiness and neutral conditions, and anger was added as another emotion. Then they were asked to perform a task required rapid response. While negative emotions such as sadness and fear had minimised distractions and higher accuracy rate among the participants, anger showed negative impact. It had impaired inhibition in the participants. Hence, it was proved that approach-oriented emotions such as anger may not have positive impact on minds like withdrawal-oriented emotions such as sadness and fear.
Limitations of the study
One of the limitations of the study was that it did not include more negative emotions as part of the study to understand their impact. For example, disgust as a negative emotion can have impaired influence.
However, the research also busts the myth that negative emotions impair cognitive performance. In fact, negative emotions such as sadness and fear, as observed in the study, helps in reducing distractions and improving accuracy rate.
