Effect of Subjective or Objective Mood Induction over Change Detection using Positive and Negative Affect

Abstract

Visual faculty dominates as our primary mode of interaction with the world around us. Yet there are severe limits to what we can consciously experience in our everyday lives. Failure to detect changes in the environment may result in change blindness, a phenomenon of visual perception that occurs when we potentially miss out on the visual changes that have occurred around us. Previous literature has attempted to examine the phenomena of change detection in the context of driving, gaming, active sports and so on. However, the potential influence of other factors such as the emotional state of the individual witnessing the change is explored less. Moreover, the difference in change detection as a consequence of subjective versus objective mood induction has not been explored at all. The current study therefore investigated the effect of mood states (positive or negative) on people’s ability to detect changes (incidental and attentional). Comparisons across participants were made based on their performance on a standard motion picture change detection task, after a positive or negative mood induction using either a subjective or objective mood induction method. The results found that positive mood enhances change detection in comparison to negative mood and change detection was not facilitated by subjective mood induction, participants in the objective mood induction group detected more changes on average.