Mood and Attention (06-22-10)

Ford and his colleagues build on earlier research detailing how emotional state helps determine how people view their environment, literally.  This body of knowledge, other components of which have been reported in earlier blog posts, indicates how important it is for designers to respond to space users’ predominant mental state.  In some situations user emotional state can reliably be predicted (e.g., people leaving traffic court).  This particular research reveals that anger increases attention to rewarding but not to threatening information.  Threatening information includes situations to be avoided while rewarding material is inherently satisfying.

Brett Ford, Maya Tamir, Tad Bruye, William Shirer, Caroline Mahoney, and Holly Taylor. “Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize:  Anger and Visual Attention to Threats and Rewards.”  Psychological Science, in press.