RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Does Feeling Happy Contributes to Flexible Thinking: Exploringthe Association Between Positive Emotionsand Cognitive Flexibility

Papri Nath & Rabindra Kumar Pradhan

Received: 13 August 2012 /Accepted: 15 January 2014# National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2014

Abstract This study examined the association betweenpositive emotions and cognitive flexibility. The studycomprises of two experiments which examine the influ-ence of positive/neutral writing and watching positivemovie (methods of emotion induction) on cognitive flex-ibility. Cognitive flexibility was observed on a shapedetection task. The results do not lend support to theassociation between positive emotions and cognitiveflexibility. The results are discussed in light of theexisting literature and issues for further research areindicated.

Keywords Positive emotions . Cognitive flexibility . Positivemovie . Positive writing . Shape detection task

Introduction

Emotions are often viewed as states that facilitate the processof responding to a given environmental situation by coordi-nating the efforts of the organism. Emotions have powerfulinfluence on human cognition and behaviour. For example,feeling of fear prepares a person how to escape from

threatening stimuli, while experience of curiosity leads tofurther exploration. These emotional states can change theinformation processing priorities according to the demandsof any situation (Gray 2004). Recent researches on emotionshave generated interesting and useful information relatedto human cognition and behaviour. A number of researchesto explore the influence of positive emotions on cognition andits significance in human adaptation and growth. Earlier,major focus was on studying the nature and functions ofnegative emotions like anger and fear. In contrast, studiesexploring the influences of positive emotions like love, joy,curiosity, hope, optimism, gratitude are less explored(Fredrickson 1998, 2001). The major reason is that negativeemotions arise during life threatening situations and facilitate‘specific action tendencies’ which ensures our survival duringadverse situations. In contrast, positive emotions neither ariseduring life threatening situation nor do they show any specificaction tendencies. Thus, the adaptive significance of positiveemotions remains unclear. In this direction, broaden-and-buildtheory (Fredrickson 1998, 2001) proposes that positive emo-tions might not display any changes at the physiological levelbut it has immediate impact at cognitive level, which haspositive life outcomes in the long run. This proposition hasbeen tested in several studies which demonstrate significantimpact of positive emotions on creative thinking (Hirt et al.2008), psychological resilience (Fredrickson et al. 2003), andwell being (Cohen et al. 2003; Danner et al. 2001).

Positive Emotions and Cognition

Several lines of empirical and theoretical investigations havehighlighted the association between positive emotions andcognition in terms of global and local processing of

P. Nath : R. K. Pradhan (*)Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute ofTechnology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India 721302e-mail: rabi2020@gmail.com

R. K. Pradhane-mail: rkpradhan@hss.iitkgp.ernet.in

P. Nathe-mail: paprinath07@gmail.com

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information (Clore and Huntsinger 2007; Derryberry andTucker 1994; Fredrickson 2003, 2004; Fredrickson andBranigan 2005; Gasper and Clore 2002; Srinivasan andGupta 2010). Global processing refers to perceiving a stimu-lus on the basis of its overall configuration whereas localprocessing considers components of a stimulus for perception(Tan et al. 2009). Broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson1998, 2001) proposes that negative emotions result innarrowing of cognition or attention focus by restricting theflow of incoming information whereas positive emotions pro-vides a broad/global focus to process wide range of informa-tion. Similarly, affect-as-information hypothesis (Clore et al.2001) relates positive emotions with global (broadened) pro-cessing of information. In line with broaden-and-build theory,a number of studies have demonstrated that induced positiveemotions expand the attentional breadth in comparison to theneutral emotions (Biss 2008; Biss et al. 2010; Johnson et al.2010; Olivers and Nieuwenhuis 2006; Rowe et al. 2007;Srivastava and Srinivasan 2010; Vermeulen 2010; Wadlingerand Isaacowitz 2006). Another study revealed that globalfocus facilitates identification of happy faces and local focusfacilitates identification of sad faces (Srinivasan and Hanif2009). An study on consumer behaviour (Khan and Isen1993) reported that positive emotions increase the tendencyto perceive a product in a more distinct and elaborate way.These findings provide strength to the notion of global–localbias associated with positive and negative emotions.

In contrast, a different line of research proposes the flexi-bility hypothesis (Baumann and Kuhl 2005; Tan et al. 2009).According to this view, the influence of emotions on cognitionis not static or biased rather dynamic and flexible. Two majorevidences for such an argument comes from the Gestalt ap-proach of ‘whole’ and the ‘global precedence hypothesis’(Navon 1977). According to the Gestalt approach initially anobject is perceived on the basis of its overall configuration andthen the local elements are perceived. Global precedencehypothesis (Navon 1977) suggests that when a picture ispresented, first a person perceives the entire picture and thenthe details of that picture. Its primary reason is that perceivingthe entire picture requires less attentional resources than per-ceiving the details. Therefore, global focus of attention is morenatural and dominant than local focus of processing and is notassociated with either positive or negative emotions. Morerecent evidence comes from studies in the context of healthrelated information processing (Das and Fennis 2008; Estradaet al. 1997; Raghunathan and Trope 2002). The studies dem-onstrate that individuals experiencing positive emotions doattend to negative, specifically self threatening informationwhen it is useful and important. On the contrary, accordingto ‘hedonic contingency model’, positive emotion is supposedto primarily process positive information and avoid negativeinformation. ‘Emotion as a resource theory’ (Isen 1993) ex-plains this contradiction by stating that when essential,

positive emotion seeks to process even negative informationat the cost of depletion of current positive emotional stateconsidering its long term benefits (Raghunathan and Trope2002; Trope and Neter 1994). Here, it is important to note thatwhen situation demands positive emotion facilitates process-ing of negative information as well. Altogether these findingsreject the notion of global–local bias associated with positiveand negative emotions. Based on these arguments, flexibilityhypothesis (Baumann and Kuhl 2005) proposes that the im-pact of positive emotions on cognition could not be explainedin terms of global–local bias rather cognitive flexibility ininformation processing. Cognitive flexibility has been definedin terms of creative problem solving, remote associations, andintegration of diverse material (Isen et al. 1987). Murray et al.(1990) elaborated the idea of cognitive flexibility as “activelychoosing strategies that fit individuals’ goals and intelligentlyadapting to one’s environment”.

Baumann and Kuhl (2005) tested the flexibility hypothesisby using a ‘shape detection task’ (adapted from Derryberryand Reed 1998) to examine the association between positiveemotions and cognitive flexibility. The task consisted of geo-metrical objects (circle, triangle, square, or diamond) com-posed of smaller geometrical objects (Fig. 1). Participants’task was to decide whether a given shape is present in thetarget shape or not. For example, the shape ‘triangle’ is presentin both the extreme left and right shape (Fig. 1) in local andglobal position respectively and thus, the answer will be a‘yes’. For the centre figure the response will be a ‘no’ astriangle is not present in either local or global position.Therefore, the shape detection task had only one correctanswer which created a demand to either adopt local or globalprocessing for making correct decision. Thus, while previousstudies (Gasper and Clore 2002) examined preferences inprocessing, Baumann and Kuhl (2005) investigated the abilityto flexibly switch between the processing modes. The resultsshowed that when under positive emotional state participantsexhibited greater response to both local and global stimuli ascompared to negative emotional state, demonstrating cogni-tive flexibility. Recently, a study by Tan and colleagues (2009)extended the flexibility hypothesis. They modified the natureof the affective primes used for emotion induction. In addition,they also included pictorial primes along with verbal primes intheir study. They found similar results as Baumann and Kuhl(2005) providing support to the flexibility hypothesis.

Inconsistency in Empirical Findings

Following the study design of both Baumann and Kuhl (2005)and Tan and colleagues (2009), Yeh (2010) conducted a seriesof experiments to test the impact of positive emotions oncognition. Contrary to the findings of the mentioned studiesYeh (2010) found inconclusive results. Similarly a number ofother studies have also reported conflicting results even after

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using same paradigms for measuring cognitive flexibility(Bruyneel et al. 2012; Cohn 2008). For instance, a study using‘card sorting paradigm’ found that happiness impaired perfor-mance suggesting low cognitive flexibility (Sacharin 2009)whereas a previous study (Qu and Zelazo 2007) found stronglink between positive emotions and cognitive flexibility usingthe same paradigm. Jefferies et al. (2008) found oppositeresults on the widely used ‘attentional blink task paradigm’.There are several other studies using various task paradigmsfor measuring cognitive flexibility like switching task (Cohn2008), stroop task (Philips et al. 2002), fluency tasks(Carvalho and Ready 2010), attentional orienting task(Compton et al. 2004), antisaccade task (Van der Stigchelet al. 2010), and complex problem solving task (Speringet al. 2005; Cohn 2008), show inconclusive results. Thus itis evident that, the association between positive emotions andcognitive flexibility is unclear.

The Present Study

This study was designed the present studymakes an attempt toexamine the flexibility hypothesis (Baumann and Kuhl 2005)by addressing following methodological issues.

First, a series of experimental studies (Tan et al. 2009) havesuggested that experimentally induced emotions are moreeffective in examining the link between emotions and cogni-tion. Taking this suggestion into consideration, the presentstudy used experimental manipulation for inducing desiredemotions.

Second, literature also suggests that trait emotionality/affectivity might influence the performance on cognitive tasks(Spering et al. 2005; Sacharin 2009). Thus, in the presentstudy the influence of trait affectivity was controlled whileinvestigating the link between positive emotions and cognitiveflexibility. For this purpose the emotion groups under studywere divided on basis of scores on trait affectivity measure.

Third, past studies suggests that too many repetitions ofemotion measures during a study may mask the influence ofemotion on cognitive processes (Keltner et al. 1993; Speringet al. 2005). Taking this fact into consideration, emotionalstate was measured only twice during the entire study.

Fourth, previous studies have reported that complex natureof cognitive task might hinder in studying the relationshipbetween positive emotions and cognitive task performance(Cohn 2008; Yeh 2010). The reason is that participants feelstressed when they are unable to perform well on a cognitivetask. Therefore, the simple cognitive tasks were maintainedused.

Two experimental studies were conducted to achieve thegoals of the study. The first study explored the influence ofpositive writing (writing about pleasant experiences) and thesecond study observed the influence of watching positivemovie on cognitive flexibility. Both the methods of emotioninduction vary in their effectiveness (Martin 1990; Rottenberget al. 2007), watching video clips induce strong emotionswhereas positive writing induces mild emotions. Thus, theuse of two different methods of inducing emotions provide astrong base to compare and generalize the findings.

Experiment I

Method

Participants

Sixty two students (Mean age=22 years, SD=3.35 years)participated in the study. They were randomly drawn from areputed academic institute in India.

Measures

Trait Positive and Negative Emotions. Positive negativeaffectivity scale (Watson et al. 1988) was administered tomeasure trait positive and negative emotions. The mea-sure consists of 10 positive (enthusiastic, alert, strong)and 10 negative (nervous, jittery, irritable) descriptors ofemotional state. The response scale ranges from 1 =never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = moderately, 5 =quite frequently, 6 = frequently, and 7 = always.Emotional State. The participants’ emotional state wasmeasured on the state version of positive negative affec-tivity scales (PANAS). Both the trait and state version of

Fig. 1 Geometrical shapes(target) for global–local detection

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PANAS contain same items, only instructions differ ac-cording to the objective of the study.Emotion Induction. Positive writing or writing aboutpositive life experiences was used as a method of induc-ing positive emotions. Writing about positive life experi-ences is found to be associated with increased levels ofpositive emotion (Burton andKing 2004; Sacharin 2009).Positive writing includes writing about one’s life goals(Harrist et al. 2007), expressive letter writing (Mosherand Burg 2006), expressing gratitude (Sheldon andLyubomirsky 2006), and benefit finding (Guastella andDadds 2008). In the present study, positive and neutralwriting was used to induce positive and neutral emotionsrespectively. The participants’ task was to write on agiven topic for 20–25 min. The experimental group wasasked to write about the ‘happiest moment of their lives’whereas neutral group was asked to write on the topic of‘time management’.Cognitive Flexibility. A shape detection task (SDT) wasconstructed to observe cognitive flexibility. The task isadapted from a test that has been previously used byBaumann and Kuhl (2005). The test stimuli contains ofsmaller geometrical figures which are arranged to form abigger geometrical figure (Fig. 1). The smaller geometri-cal shape forms the local response (local position) and thebigger geometrical shape forms the global response(global position). The task requires the participants’ tosimply decide that whether the target geometrical shape ispresent or not in the target stimuli either in local or globalposition. The name of the geometrical shape is presentedas CIRCLE or TRIANGLE followed by the presentationof the target stimuli. The duration of the presentation isfixed. The sequence of each trial is presented in Fig. 2.The task has two sections—practice task and main task.The practice and main task contain 12 and 144 trialsrespectively. The appearance of each of the trials is basedon probability. Fifty percent of trials present neutral stim-uli, 25 % trials present global stimuli and rest 25 % trialspresent local stimuli. Neutral stimuli do not contain the‘target shape’ either in the global or local position. Theglobal and local stimuli contain the ‘target shape’ in theglobal and local positions respectively. The four geomet-rical figures which form the target stimuli are circle,square, triangle, and diamond. The average time takenby a participant to complete the task is approximately6 min.

Procedure

Experiment I involved a between-subjects design. Participantswere divided into two groups—posit ive writ ing(experimental) and neutral writing (control) group based on

their trait affectivity scores taken 7 days prior to the experi-ment. Based on the affectivity scores participants with bothpositive and negative affectivity were equally distributedamong two groups to form the experimental and controlgroup. This was done to control the effect of individualdifferences on the results of the study.

On the day of the experiment, all the participants wereasked to sit comfortably in a room with proper light andtemperature. There was no distraction due to noise or seatingarrangement. Every participant was provided a computer witha 15 inch monitor, offered a proper seat in the lab and received a5 min relaxation exercise. This was done to minimize theindividual differences at the baseline level of emotional state.The relaxation exercise was followed by a pre-interventionmeasure of emotional state. Thereafter, the participants weregiven a writing task of 20–25 min to induce the desiredemotional state. Then, a post-intervention measure of theemotional state was taken. In the next step, participants re-ceived instructions regarding the shape detection task (SDT).As the instructions were over, the test was presented usingMATLAB 2009a version on the computer screen where theparticipants completed the SDT. The participants’ task was toclick the mouse button to indicate the presence of the ‘targetshape’ either in global or local position. In order to indicate theabsence of the target shape in either position, no mouse clickwas required. After the completion of the test, participantswere debriefed about the actual aim of the study and appreci-ated for their participation with a small gift.

Results

Preliminary Analysis The descriptive and reliability statisticsof the emotion scale are above the recommended cutoff valueof .70 (Nunnally and Bernstein 1994).

Manipulation Check There was a significant increase in theexperience of positive emotions during post-interventionphase (M=51.81, SD=13.65) as compared to pre-intervention (M=42.16, SD=14.5) phase, t(30)=4.97, p<.01(two-tailed) among the participants of experimental group(Table 1). Similarly, control group participants’ also experi-enced increase in experience of positive emotions during topost-intervention (M=48.90, SD=10.16) phase than pre-intervention (M=21.48, SD=5.18) phase, t(30)=12.48,p<.01 (two-tailed).

This suggests that the experience of positive emotionsincreased significantly across both the groups after writingtask. But, the difference between the groups, in experiencedpositive emotions (M=1.67), t(60)=.95, p<.34, after the writ-ing task did not reach the significance level (Table 2).

Cognitive Flexibility In the cognitive flexibility measure(SDT), the participants’were supposed to indicate the presence

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and absence (detection) of the target shape within a timelimit (500 ms). So there was no chance of incorrectdetection rather a hit (global and local detection) or miss(no detection) response. Therefore, the analysis was doneon basis of response rate (local and global detection) andreaction time (RT).

As the study involves one independent (emotional state)and two dependent variables (global detection and localdetection), multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)was administered (Pallant 2007) for data analysis. Theresults of multivariate analysis based on response rateshow that positive and neutral group did not differ signif-icantly in their overall cognitive flexibility (Table 3).Similarly, when the analysis was done using reaction timethe groups did not differ in their overall cognitive flexi-bility (Table 3).

The between group effects (Table 4), show that both thegroups do not differ on their global detection separately.Similarly, using reaction time, the groups did not differ intheir global detection separately (Table 4).

Wilks’ Lambda value (a multivariate test of significance)with a significance level less than .05, indicates a statisticallysignificant difference between experimental and control groupin their cognitive flexibility. An inspection of the mean scoresindicates that there exists dominance of local response overglobal response across both the groups under study (Table 5).

Overall results indicate that on basis of response rate andreaction time, the experimental and control group do not differin their cognitive flexibility on the given shape detection task.

Discussion

The results show no significant difference between positiveand neutral writing as a method of inducing emotions (Gasperand Clore 2002; Guastella and Dadds 2008). The results arecontrary to earlier research (Burton and King 2004). Thepotential reason for such findings could be attributed to thesubjects’ fear of disclosing some personal information in anacademic setting, lack of motivation, and fatigue. However,participants in the neutral writing session wrote on a topic

Fixation (1000 ms)

Target Shape (500ms)

Blank Screen (400ms)

Target Stimuli (500ms)

Response (1000 ms)

TRIANGLE

Fig. 2 Sequence of a trial of the‘shape detection task’

Table 1 Paired-samples t-test of pretest-posttest measures of positive and negative emotional state

Mean difference SD Standard error of mean t df p (2-tailed)

Pair 1Positive writing group (positive emotion)Pretest- posttest measure

9.65 10.80 1.94 4.97 30 .01

Pair2Positive writing group (negative emotion)Pretest- posttest measure

3.84 5.65 1.01 3.78 30 .01

Pair3Neutral writing group (positive emotion)Pretest measure- posttest measure

27.42 12.23 2.19 12.48 30 .01

Pair4Neutral writing group (negative emotion)Pretest- posttest measure

26.45 10.04 1.80 14.67 30 .01

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which hardly contained any personal information, minimizingthe chances of above mentioned factors influencing the emo-tion induction process. Though, a verbal and written instruc-tion was given to the participants regarding the confidentialityof their responses. But, the possibility of the presence of socialdesirability bias could not be controlled completely. Anotherpotential reason that neutral group did not differ significantlyfrom positive group in experiencing positive affect could bethe phenomenon of ‘positivity offset’ (Diener and Diener1996). According to this phenomenon even in a neutral affectstate a person is mildly positive and has similar effects oncognitive functioning. Thus, participants of neutral writinggroup experienced similar amount of positive emotions as byparticipants of positive writing group.

Further, the results show that participants in positive (ex-perimental group) and neutral emotional state (control group)did not differ in their cognitive flexibility. Such contraryfindings have been reported in previous studies (Cohn 2008;Carvalho 2008). This could be attributed to the lack of effec-tiveness of the emotion induction method which could notproduce significant difference in levels of experienced emo-tions between both the groups.

In order to control the extraneous factors during experimentI, another study was conducted (Experiment II), wherein‘watching positive movie’ was used as an emotion inductionmethod.

Experiment II

Method

Participants

Thirty one students (Mean age=19 years, SD=1.28 years)participated in the study. They were randomly selected froma reputed academic institute in India.

Measures

Most of themeasures of experiment I and II were common. Asthis experiment followed a pretest-posttest design where onlyone group is involved, trait measure of affectivity was nottaken. A description of the additional measure is given below:

Emotion Induction.The method of watching a movie clipor video was used for inducing positive emotional state.This is a widely used method (Cohn 2008; Fredricksonand Branigan 2005; Fredrickson et al. 2000) for inducingemotions. In the present study, a positive movie ‘HeraPheri’ was shown to the participants’ for induction ofpositive emotions. The selection of the particular moviewas based on the scores of a survey in which the targetsample were asked to rate five most popular Hindi com-edy movies on a 5- point scale. The movies are known asAngoor, Hera-Pheri, Andaaz Apna Apna, Golmaal andChupke Chupke.

Procedure

Experiment II followed a pretest-posttest design. The pretestphase signifies the neutral emotional state and posttest phasesignifies the positive emotional state. All the basic arrange-ments related to illumination, noise, and seating arrangementwas similar to experiment I. As a cover story, the participantswere told that the experiment is tomeasure their attention levelbefore and after a relaxation activity. Watching a movie wasintroduced as the relaxation activity and the SDT was intro-duced as the attention consuming activity. After this activity,unlike experiment I, the participants were explained andinstructed about the SDT (as described in the previous section)right before taking the pretest (pre-intervention) measures ofemotional state. This modification was done to reduce thetime gap between emotion induction and response towardsSDT. It was expected that this modification will better help tocapture the influence of positive emotional state on cognitiveflexibility. Once the instructions were delivered, a pre-intervention measure of emotional state was taken. The par-ticipants then completed the final SDT for pre-interventionmeasure of cognitive flexibility which lasted for about 6 min.Following this, a 30 min comedy movie entitled ‘Hera Pheri’

Table 2 Independent samples t-test of posttest measures—posi-tive and neutral writing group

df t Mean difference p (2-tailed)

Positive writing group- posttest scores (positive emotion) 60 .95 2.90 .34Neutral writing group- posttest scores (positive emotions)

Positive writing group -posttest scores (negative emotion) 60 .10 1.23 .92Neutral writing group- posttest scores (negative emotions)

Table 3 Multivariate analysis of variance (Wilks’ Lambda)

Value F Error df df p Partial etasquared

Response rate .94 1.75 59.00 2 .18 .06

Reaction time .94 2.04 59.00 2 .14 .06

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was screened for the participants. In the next step, a posttest(post-intervention) measure of emotional state was obtained.Then, participants once again completed the SDT for post-intervention measure for cognitive flexibility. At the end,participants were appreciated for their participation with asmall gift.

Results

Preliminary Analysis The reliability scores (Cronbach alpha)of PANAS for pretest (.82) and posttest (.89) are above therecommended level of .70 (Nunnally and Bernstein 1994).

Manipulation Check There was a statistically significant in-crease in positive emotion during post-intervention phase (M=42.39, SD=2.58) as compared to the pre-intervention (M=35.13, SD=2.58) phase, t(30)=4.91, p<.01 (two-tailed). Incontrast, scores for negative emotion reduced from pre-intervention to post-intervention phase (Table 6). The resultssuggest that, watching a positive movie significantly contrib-uted in increasing positive emotions and reducing negativeemotions.

Cognitive Flexibility The multivariate analysis shows that onbasis of response rate the pretest and posttest phase did notdiffer significantly in their overall cognitive flexibility(Table 7). Analysis based on reaction time also demonstratedsimilar results (Table 7).

When the global response rate were analyzed separately,the pretest and posttest phase did not differ significantly(Table 8). Similarly, on the basis of reaction time also thepretest and posttest phase (Table 8) did not differ significantly.Though not significant, but the mean scores show that duringthe posttest phase the response rate increased whereas theconsumed reaction time decreased in comparison to the pretestphase (Table 9).

Overall, the results of the study remain inconclusiveconcerning the relationship between positive emotions andcognitive flexibility.

General Discussion

The findings of experiment II were similar with those ofexperiment I, and the results of both the experiments couldbe discussed together. An analysis of the methods of emotioninduction suggests that both positive writing and watchingpositive movie are effective methods of inducing positiveemotions. While writing about positive experiences a personrecalls the memories and can relive the pleasant momentsagain which acts as a stress releaser. This method becomesless effective when it comes to the required effort from theparticipant during the emotion induction process. Whereas,watching positive movie provides relaxation and requires lesseffort and seems to be effective to overcome the effect offatigue and lack of motivation to a great extent (as discussedin Experiment I) in comparison to a writing task. Therefore,watching a positive movie could be considered as an efficientmethod of inducing desired emotions.

The findings of Experiment I show that similar to positivewriting task, neutral writing task also resulted in enhancementof positive affect. The results could be attributed to the phe-nomenon of ‘positivity offset’ (Diener and Diener 1996),which states that even in neutral state a person is mildlypositive. Thus, it becomes difficult to differentiate the impactof positive and neutral emotions on cognitive flexibility.

The results of experiments I and II show that despite ofincrease in the experience of positive emotions, the difference

Table 4 Multivariate analysis ofvariance–tests of between sub-jects effects

*Bonferroni adjusted alphalevel=.025

IV DV Error df df F p* Partial eta squared

Emotional state(positive- neutral)

Global response 60 1 1.39 .24 .12

Local response 60 1 3.19 .08 .24

Global reaction time 60 1 .02 .89 .00

Local reaction time 60 1 1.18 .28 .02

Table 5 Mean scores for response rate and reaction time (ms)

Globalresponse

Localresponse

GlobalRT (ms)

LocalRT (ms)

Positive writing group 16.58 24.58 479.68 412.74

Neutral writing group 19.19 29.97 474.52 468.71

RT reaction time

Table 6 Paired samples t-test of pre-post intervention measures of emo-tional state

Meandifference

SD Standarderror ofmean

t df p level(2-Tailed)

Pair 1Pretest PAPosttest PA

−7.26 8.23 1.94 4.91 30 .01

Pair2Pretest NAPosttest NA

6.29 7.00 1.01 5.00 30 .01

PA positive emotional state, NA negative emotional state

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in cognitive flexibility was not significant across groups andphases. Similar findings have been reported in a number ofpast studies (Biss 2008; Brunye et al. 2009; Yeh 2010). Here,the inclusion of a negative emotional state for comparison(Rowe et al. 2007; Srinivasan and Gupta 2010) might providenew direction to the present findings.

Concluding Comments

The study made an attempt to examine the flexibility hypoth-esis (Baumann and Kuhl 2005) by addressing certain meth-odological issues. Despite of addressing the possible issuescausing inconsistency in previous studies, overall results ofthe present study remains inconclusive. However, apart frommethodological issues there are certain potential moderatorsand mediators that require attention to address the concernedinconsistency in the results of the present study. A briefdiscussion in this direction becomes important.

First, the results of both the experiments show a dominanceof local response over global response across the groups understudy. In contrast, some prior studies have shown dominanceof global over local response during a positive emotional stateBaumann and Kuhl (2005); Fredrickson and Branigan 2005;Rowe et al. 2007). A potential reason for such contrary resultscould be the effect of age on the relationship between emo-tional state and cognitive flexibility. A number of studies(Carvalho 2008; Kim et al. 2007; Thomas and Hasher 2006)have demonstrated that age might act as a moderator in theconcerned relationship. These findings suggest that olderadults (50+ years) show more global response during a posi-tive emotional state. The age range of the current study was

limited to 18–32 years. Thus, inclusion of diverse age groupsin the sample might lead to better conclusions.

Second, during the past decade, emotion researchers havestudied the relationship between emotions and personalitytraits but the major focus has been on negative emotions(Konishi 2007). Recently, interest for positive psychologyhas led researchers to explore the role of personality traits inthe relationship between positive emotions and cognitive flex-ibility (Liad 2006; Noguchi et al. 2006). The big five traitshave got importance in these studies and specifically extra-version and openness is considered as most associated topositive emotions (Costa and McCrae 1992; Kelly 2006;Zhang and Huang 2001). Thus, while studying positive emo-tions, a personality measure needs to be incorporated.

Third, recently the role of motivation has been consideredimportant in the study of attention allocation (Chiew andBraver 2011; Pessoa 2009). It is suggested that the impact ofpositive and negative emotion on cognitive processes canoften depend on the motivational direction and intensity ofthe emotional state (Harmon-Jones and Gable 2009; Gableand Harmon-Jones 2010). It is found that positive emotionalstate high in approach motivation narrows cognition whereaspositive emotional state low in approach motivation broadenscognition. Thus, the intensity of motivation matters in therelationship between positive emotions and cognitive flexibil-ity. So as a future scope, examining the influence of motiva-tion on the link between emotion and cognition will providenew direction to the existing literature.

Fourth, the impact of cultural context on the expression andregulation of emotions (Miyamoto and Ma 2011; Sibia andMisra 2011) have been reported in a number of studies.Kitayama et al. (2000) pointed out that the way positiveemotions are perceived and experienced differs across cul-tures. A study based on strategic display of emotions duringnegotiation suggests that culture influences the outcomes ofnegotiation based on the amount of positive and negativeemotions involved in the negotiation process (Kopelman andRosette 2007). A multi-culture study (Scollon et al. 2004)discovered that cultural differences influence the intensity ofemotion recall. Indian researches examining positive emo-tions in cultural context are scarce (Sibia and Misra 2011)and thus, it would be interesting to explore the impact ofcultural context on the association between positive emotionsand cognitive processes.

Table 7 Multivariate analysis of variance (Wilks’ Lambda)

Value F Error df Sig. level Partial eta squared

Response .99 0.32 59.00 .73 .01

Reaction time .92 2.49 59.00 .09 .08

Table 8 Multivariate analysis of variance–tests of between subjectseffects

IV DV df f Sig.level*

Partial etasquared

Emotional state(pretest- posttest)

Global response 1 0.50 .48 .00

Local response 1 0.05 .82 .00

Global RT 1 4.75 .03 .07

Local RT 1 4.85 .03 .08

RT reaction time

*Bonferroni adjusted alpha level=.025

Table 9 Showing reaction time (ms) and mean of correct responses

Globalresponse

Localresponse

GlobalRT (ms)

LocalRT (ms)

Pretest phase 23.48 33.65 478.39 419.68

Posttest phase 24.39 34.09 463.55 400.65

RT reaction time

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Fifth, few recent studies (Hunsinger 2012; Hunsinger et al.2010, 2012) have documented the role of context in therelationship between emotion and information processingstyle. In this direction the ‘global vs. local processing model,a systems account’ (GLOMOsys) points out the influence of(Forster 2012; Isbell 2010) familiar and non-familiar contexton selection of global and local processing. The model pro-poses that lack of familiarity increases global processing butwhen the context is familiar, local processing dominates tolearn the details. As a future prospect, influence of contextcould be studied on the link between emotions and cognitiveflexibility. This will provide useful information about socialcognitive processes.

In addition to the above mentioned moderating factors fewresearches have also pointed out the mediating role of neuro-logical factors while examining the relationship between pos-itive emotions and cognitive flexibility (Ashby et al. 1999;Fleisher 2004). According to this viewpoint, positive emo-tions lead to temporary increase in dopamine levels (Williamsand Goldman-Rakic 1993) which results in cognitive flexibil-ity. But still the results are unclear (Van der Stigchel et al.2010). Further research in this direction might help to explorethe influence of positive emotions on cognition in a compre-hensive manner.

References

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