Abstract
This study was designed to investigate how both the experience of approach-motivated positive affect and emotion regulation alter attentional focus and food choice. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Participants in the neutral group were asked to view a series of images that depicted everyday, non-emotional items. Participants in the other two groups viewed a series of images depicting appetizing desserts. One of these groups was asked to naturally view the dessert images, whereas the other group was instructed to reappraise their emotional responses to the delicious desserts (by thinking of the desserts’ negative qualities). Following exposure to the images, data were collected from participants (N = 115) in each of the three groups on global–local focus and subsequent snack selections. Compared to participants in the neutral group, participants who naturally viewed the dessert images evidenced a more local attentional focus on Navon’s (Cognit Psychol 9(3):353–383, 1977) letters task. Relative to those who naturally viewed the dessert images, participants asked to reappraise (down-regulate) to the dessert images evidenced a more global attentional focus and took significantly more healthy compared to unhealthy snacks. This is the first evidence indicating that the use of emotion regulation can alter the impact of approach motivated stimuli on subsequent global–local focus and eating behavior.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allison, D. B., & Heshka, S. (1993). Emotion and eating in obesity—a critical analysis. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 13(3), 289–295.
Bachar, E., Latzer, Y., Kreitler, S., & Berry, E. M. (1999). Empirical comparison of two psychological therapies. Self psychology and cognitive orientation in the treatment of anorexia and bulimia. The Journal of psychotherapy practice and research, 8(2), 115–128.
Baucom, D. H., & Aiken, P. A. (1981). Effect of depressed mood on eating among obese and non-obese dieting and non-dieting persons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41(3), 577–585.
Baumeister, R. F., Heatherton, T. F., & Tice, D. M. (1994). Losing control: How and how people fail at self-regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press Inc.
Berry, E. M., Fried, S., & Edelstein, E. L. (1995). Abnormal oral sensory perception in patients with a history of anorexia-nervosa and the relationship between physiological and psychological improvement in this disease. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 63(1), 32–37.
Cannetti, L., Bachar, E., & Berry, E. M. (2002). Food and emotion. Behavioural Processes, 60(2), 157–164.
Carver, C. S., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2009). Anger is an approach-related affect: Evidence and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 183.
Cooper, P. J., & Bowskill, R. (1986). Dysphoric mood and overeating. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 25, 155–156.
Estrada, C. A., Isen, A. M., & Young, M. J. (1997). Positive affect facilitates integration of information and decreases anchoring in reasoning among physicians. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 72(1), 117–135.
Fleming, K. A., & Bartholow, B. D. (2013). Alcohol cues, approach bias, and inhibitory control: Applying a dual process model of addiction to alcohol sensitivity. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/a0031565
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology—the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Cognition and Emotion, 19(3), 313–332.
Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frijda, N. H. (1996). The laws of emotions. Zeitschrift fur Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychoanalyse, 42(3), 205–221.
Fujita, K., & Han, H. A. (2009). Moving beyond deliberative control of impulses The effect of construal levels on evaluative associations in self-control conflicts. Psychological Science, 20(7), 799–804.
Gable, P. A., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2008). Approach-motivated positive affect reduces breadth of attention. Psychological Science, 19(5), 476–482.
Gable, P., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2010). The blues broaden, but the nasty narrows: Attentional consequences of negative affects low and high in motivational intensity. Psychological Science, 21(2), 211–215.
Gasper, K., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Attending to the big picture: Mood and global versus local processing of visual information. Psychological Science, 13(1), 34–40.
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464.
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299.
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281–291.
Harmon-Jones, E., Lueck, L., Fearn, M., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2006). The effect of personal relevance and approach-related action expectation on relative left frontal cortical activity. Psychological Science, 17, 434–440.
Isen, A. M. (1990). The influence of positive and negative affect on cognitive organization: Some implications for development. In N. Stein, B. Leventhal, & T. Trabusso (Eds.), Psychological and biological approaches to emotion (pp. 75–94). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Isen, A. M. (2000). Some perspectives on positive affect and self-regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 11(3), 184–187.
Isen, A. M., & Daubman, K. A. (1984). The influence of affect on categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(6), 1206–1217.
Isen, A. M., & Means, B. (1983). The influence of positive affect on decision-making strategy. Social Cognition, 2(1), 18–31.
Isen, A. M., Rosenzweig, A. S., & Young, M. J. (1991). The influence of positive affect on clinical problem-solving. Medical Decision Making, 11(3), 221–227.
Kimchi, R., & Palmer, S. E. (1982). Form and texture in hierarchically constructed patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8(4), 521–535.
Lang, P. J., Ghman, A., & Vaitl, D. (1988). The international affective picture system [photographic slides]. The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Levenson, R. W. (1994). Human emotions: A functional view. In P. Ekman & R. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion fundamental questions (pp. 123–126). New York: Oxford University Press.
Liberman, N., Trope, Y., & Stephan, E. (2007). Psychological distance. Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles, 2, 353–381.
Macht, M., & Simons, G. (2000). Emotions and eating in everyday life. Appetite, 35(1), 65–71.
Marsh, A. A., Ambady, N., & Kleck, R. E. (2005). The effects of fear and anger facial expressions on approach- and avoidance-related behaviors. Emotion, 5, 119–124.
Navon, D. (1977). Forest before trees—precedence of global features in visual-perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9(3), 353–383.
Rinck, M., & Becker, E. S. (2007). Approach and avoidance in fear of spiders. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 38(2), 105–120.
Rowe, G., Hirsh, J. B., & Anderson, A. K. (2007). Positive affect increases the breadth of attentional selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(1), 383–388.
Rozin, P., & Fallon, A. (1987). A perspective on disgust. Psychological Review, 94, 23–41.
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user’s guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools Inc.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1990). The past explains the present—emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethology and Sociobiology, 11(4–5), 375–424.
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Psychological Review, 110(3), 403–421.
Wiers, R. W., Rinck, M., Dictus, M., & Van den Wildenberg, E. (2009). Relatively strong automatic appetitive action-tendencies in male carriers of the OPRM1 G-allele. Genes Brain and Behavior, 8(1), 101–106.
Wiers, R. W., Rinck, M., Kordts, R., Houben, K., & Strack, F. (2010). Retraining automatic action-tendencies to approach alcohol in hazardous drinkers. Addiction, 105(2), 279–287.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Drs. Philip Gable and Eddie Harmon-Jones for sharing the stimuli used from their 2008 study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Juergensen, J., Demaree, H.A. Approach-motivated positive affect and emotion regulation alter global–local focus and food choice. Motiv Emot 39, 580–588 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9472-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9472-3