title: Out of sight, out of mind: cognitive states alter the focus of attention.
abstract: People in an impulsive state are influenced mainly by the immediate incentive value of appetitive stimuli, whereas people in a reflective state usually also consider the (sometimes negative) long-term consequences of such stimuli. In order to consider all information, we hypothesize that, people in reflective states distribute their attention over all available information, whereas people in impulsive states focus their attention on the most salient information. We measured cognitive states using eye-blink rate (Experiment 1) or induced them with a procedural priming manipulation (Experiments 2 and 3). In eye-tracking Experiments 1 and 2, we established that people in an impulsive state indeed focus their attention on the salient information, whereas people in a reflective state distribute their attention. Moreover, we show that this attentional difference extends to evaluative judgments (Experiment 3), which could potentially contribute to people's increased propensity to risk in impulsive states.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Psychology, Utrecht University, <location>The Netherlands</location>
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: den Daas
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Häfner
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: de Wit
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010781:Photography; D055815:Young Adult