Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation.
The affective biasing of attention is not typically considered to be a form of emotion regulation. In this article, we argue that 'affect-biased attention' - the predisposition to attend to certain categories of affectively salient stimuli over others - provides an important component of emotion regulation. Affect-biased attention regulates subsequent emotional responses by tuning one's filters for initial attention and subsequent processing. By reviewing parallel research in the fields of emotion regulation and affect-biased attention, as well as clinical and developmental research on individual differences in attentional biases, we provide convergent evidence that habitual affective filtering processes, tuned and re-tuned over development and situation, modulate emotional responses to the world. Moreover, they do so in a manner that is proactive rather than reactive.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100St George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3GM, Canada. r.todd@acl.psych.toronto.edu
Rebecca M
RM
Todd
William A
WA
Cunningham
Adam K
AK
Anderson
Evan
E
Thompson
D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008959:Models, Neurological