The Effect Of Negative Emotions On Mind Wandering

Emotion has an important influence on people’s cognitive activities. For a long time, emotional impact on cognitive is a hot research topic of psychology. In recent years, as a kind of common phenomenon in daily life, mind wandering has gradually become the mainstream of psychological research. As a kind of unique cognitive activity, mind wandering is hard to avoid being affected by emotions. Currently, there have been some research abroad found that negative emotions can affect mind wandering(Such as: negative emotions will lead people to mind wandering more, and the contents of these mind wandering will tend to be past-related as compared with neutral emotions). However, for the domestic research about mind wandering is still in its infancy, there is nearly no research about the impacts of emotions on mind wandering in the domestic. There are many problems need to be explored. In this study, questionnaire investigation and experimental methods were used to explore the impacts of negative mood on frequency, temporal focus, emotional valence of mind wander. We also tried to explain the possible causes of these effects. In addition, this study also explored weather it is possible to relieve negative emotions by lowering the frequency of mind wandering.In study 1, we investigated the latest week’s emotional state and mind wandering status of 108 subjects. The results revealed significantly positive correlation between Mind Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) scores and negative emotion scores, but correlation between negative emotion scores and the ratio of two kinds of mind wandering (past-oriented and future-oriented) did not exist. This suggests that, for Chinese subjects, negative emotions are associated with mind wandering frequency, but are not associated with temporal focus of mind wandering. Considering the questionnaire survey was based on the subjects’recalling of mind wandering which happened within a week before, directly asked subjects to classify their mind wandering according to temporal focus existed bigger error, the results of study 1 need laboratory experiments to verify.In study 2, we used negative and neutral video to guide two groups of subjects to respectively produce negative and neutral emotions. And then they were asked to complete Choice Reaction Time Task (CRT) which need subjects to maintain attention. During this task, some thoughts probes were inserted to ask whether they were mind wandering at this moment and the temporal focus, emotional valence of mind wandering. The results revealed that the frequency of mind wandering in negative emotion group is significantly higher than neutral emotion group, but compared with neutral emotion group, negative emotions did not impact the temporal focus of mind wandering in negative group. In addition, the analysis of the emotional valence of mind wandering found that whether or not to eliminate the thoughts which contains the contents of the video the subjects saw before CRT, the emotional valence score was significantly lower in negative group than in neutral group. This suggests that, negative emotions, not only increase the frequency of mind wandering, also make the emotional valence of mind wandering more negative. Accordingly, the reason why negative emotions increase the frequency of mind wandering may be people experiencing more negative emotions will tend to extract negative memories or think something negative.In study 3, after guiding subjects to produce negative emotions, we separated them into two groups, one group needed to complete Choice Reaction Time Task (CRT), the other group needed to complete Working Memory Task (WMT). The same as study 2, during the tasks, some thoughts probes were inserted to ask something about their mind wandering status. The whole experiment process must carry on three emotion measurements (baseline, after-mood induced, after-task). The results revealed that there was no significant difference between CRT group (high mind wandering frequency) and WMT group (low mind wandering frequency) in both baseline score of negative emotions and after-mood induced score of negative emotions. But significant difference was found between CRT group and WMT group in after-task score of negative emotions. This suggests that, it really can more effectively alleviate the negative emotions by reducing the mind wandering frequency. And the reason why it have an effect may be due to the less time to think about something negative.Our conclusions:(1) Compared with neutral emotions, negative emotions will significantly increase participants’mind wandering frequency in the process of completing task, but there is no significant influence on the temporal focus of mind wandering; (2) Participants who were under a negative emotional state had a significantly lower emotional valence score of mind wandering (the emotional valence of mind wandering was more negative) than participants who were under a neutral emotional state; (3) Let the participants to do working memory task, which need to consume the cognitive resource, can effectively reduce the negative emotions.