Cornell University

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Attention Intensifies Emotion to Influence Judgment and Choice

Wednesday, May 1, 2019 at 12:20pm

202 Uris Hall

This presentation in the Department of Psychology Colloquium Series will be presented by Leaf Van Boven, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado.  (poster)

(Note special date - location will be in the usual Psychology Colloquium venue)

Abstract: Attention and emotion are core psychological systems. The things we selectively process and how we feel about them shapes our experiences, thoughts, and behaviors. It is widely understood that emotion drives attention. Our lab has examined the reverse: Attention drives emotion. Experiments using multiple procedures demonstrate that voluntary, targeted, and incidental attention intensifies emotional experience. For example, people perceive target objects they have searched for as more emotionally intense than control objects. And when attention is spatially oriented toward one object rather than another, people perceive the attended object as more intense. These effects are largely because attention increases vividness. Attention’s intensifying effects have broad implications for judgment and decision making. Attention influences consumer budgeting and increases risk aversion. Importantly, attention influences environmental judgments and decisions. Attention increases perceptions of environmental risks and reduces people’s tendency to steeply discount future environmental outcomes. As William James expressed, attention determines our experience of life.

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Event Type

Seminar

Departments

Psychology, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Sustainability

Contact E-Mail

LL19@cornell.edu

Contact Name

Linda J. LeVan

Contact Phone

607-255-3913

Speaker

Leaf Van Boven

Speaker Affiliation

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado

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