Attentional resource allocation to emotional events: An ERP study

The effects of experimentally induced emotions on task-related processing resources were investigated in two studies designed as dual-task-like paradigms. In Experiment 1, 24 participants viewed a series of affective pictures inducing positive, negative, and neutral emotional states. In Experiment 2, 24 participants imagined emotionally laden life events. Simultaneously to the emotion-inducing procedure, and during a neutral single-task condition, the participants performed auditory oddball discrimination tasks. In this paradigm, the amplitude of the oddball-evoked P3 component of the event-related brain potential reflects the allocation of processing resources to task-related processes. In both studies, the P3 amplitude was smaller in the negative as well as in the positive emotional condition, compared to the two neutral conditions. The results support the assumption that negative emotions get a higher processing priority and can drain on task-related processing resources. In addition, they extend the hypothesis to the effects of positive emotions.