Psychology News
A team of researchers at the University of Arizona explored how people who are in a bad mood can be quicker in spotting inconsistencies in what they read. The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Communication.
The Study
The participants were recruited from the Netherlands and put in a positive and a negative mood via film clips, one week apart. They were then asked to assess a set of “critical sentences” which either supported or violated familiar knowledge. Their brain waves were monitored by EEG.
The Findings
The results revealed that your brain reacts to informational inconsistencies, depending on your mood. In fact, your mood affects the way you process language and proofread facts fed to you. It was found that the human brain is more detail-oriented and objective when it is in a bad mood, as opposed to a happier one.
The researchers elaborated on the findings: “[In the study], we show that when people are in a negative mood, they are more careful and analytical. They scrutinize what’s actually stated in a text, and they don’t just fall back on their default world knowledge.”
To Know More You May Refer To
Lai, V. T., van Berkum, J., & Hagoort, P. (2022). Negative affect increases reanalysis of conflicts between discourse context and world knowledge. Frontiers in Communication, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.910482
