The Impact Of Emotion On Conflict Adaptation

In daily life, we will adjust our behavior up to our goal according to the environment, our experience, our ability and state with the aim to reach the most optimal solution to the task. This process is called cognitive control. It tells that the previous experience plays an important role in our behavior, as we often say "A fall into the pit","Repent what is past, avoid what is to come","Warning taken from the overturned cart in front" etc. In psychological experiment, we often use the conflict adaptation effects to simulate the effect of previous experience on the subsequent behavior experience in real life. The so-called conflict adaptation refers to the effect that people who previously experience conflict or not will have an impact on the resolution of the subsequent conflict. Our brain can optimize the current situation and solve the problems based on previous experience. Research on conflict adaptation effect has important significance for understanding how humans adapt to the complex environment.In the laboratory. Stroop, flanker or Simon tasks are often used to study the conflict adaptation effect. The previous studies mainly focused on the nature of the conflict adaptation, such as whether the conflict adaptation effect results from the conflict per se or stimulus repetition? If the conflict adaptation effect is the result of conflict, then it is due to response conflict or stimulus conflict? However, it is a relatively few-on the risky-factors of conflict adaptation effect. Due to varied theory explanations and arguments concerning conflict adaptation effect, researchers try to change their perspectives and to find some traces from the influencing factors of conflict adaptation effect, such as cognitive factors (e.g. attention resources) and non-cognitive factors (e.g. emotion). It’s suggested that to cognitive factors show little impact on conflict adaptation effect, while non-cognitive factors have obvious effect on conflict adaptation effect. This research is to further study the impact of emotion on conflict adaptation effect. Emotion produces far-reaching influence on our behavior and cognition. Probably because its close relationship with survival, emotional stimulus is prioritized in processing compared with non-emotional stimulus, thus affecting the behavior and cognition. Studies have shown that, the impact of the mood on conflict adaptation effect depends on mood valence, rather than mood arousal. As for the impact of emotion, it is still unclear that the emotional influence on the conflict adaptation depends on emotional valence or arousal due to the lack of research on positive emotion. Therefore there this study will also discuss this point. In addition, stimulus or response repetition has been a controversial issue in the field of conflict adaptation effect. This study will investigate the issue whether stimulus or response repetition affects the emotional influence on the conflict adaptation effect.In this study, we used emotional words (negative words, positive words, neutral words) in a color flanker task, with the aim to explore three problems concerning the impact of emotion on conflict adaptation effect:1) Does positive emotion affect conflict adaptation effect? If does, then how, hindering or promoting?2) Is the emotional valence or emotional arousal accounts for the influence of emotion on conflict adaptation effect?3) Whether the stimulus repetition will affect impact of emotion on conflict adaptation effect? In Experiment1. by using a two-color flanker task, we found that both the negative and positive emotion promoted the conflict adaptation effect, which answered the two questions of this research:1) Positive emotion can promote conflict adaptation effect;2)It is the emotional arousal that accounts for conflict adaptation effect, rather than emotional valence. However, Experiment l did not control the influence of the stimulus repetition on the question. Therefore, Experiment2aimed to control stimulus repetition to further explore the research question3).In Experiment2, we used a four-color flanker task. The respective analysis of repeated trials and non-repeated trials showed that in repeated trials conflict adaptation effect is not regulated by emotion, while in repeat trials the results were basically consistent with those of Experiment1. As a result, the stimulus repetition does not affect impact of emotion on conflict adaptation effect. The results of this study show that emotions do affect conflict adaptation effect, which depends on the emotional arousal. And the phenomenon is not affected by stimulus or reactional repetition. Our study will provide inspiration and reference for the follow-up in academic study and real life.