The Buffering Effect Of Money On Attention To Threantening Simuli

Threatening stimulus is a kind of negative stimulus that can make people fear.Money is a special need and motivation of human beings.As far as evolutionary psychology is concerned,whatever is conducive to the survival and reproduction of individuals will be preserved.For example,beware of information harmful to survival,and approach to information conducive to survival and reproduction.In the process of human evolution,modern civilization with money as a tool gradually emerged,and researchers also found that money is closely related to human survival and happiness.Moreover,the wariness of threatening stimuli contributed to the survival and perpetuation of the race.Therefore,this study hopes to explore whether the pursuit of money or vigilance against new threats are more important to individuals,and whether individuals’ pursuit of money interferes with their vigilance against threatening stimuli..This research has carried out three experiments to examine whether money stimuli can buffer the attention to threatening stimuli from the aspact of spacial,temporal and spatio-temporal competition of attention.Experiment 1 has employed dot-probe paradigm to test the attention priority to money stimuli or threatening stimuli,and found that compared with neutral stimuli,money stimuli and threatening stimuli have ecilited attention bias,and threatening stimuli have obtained a greater attention bais than money stimuli;moreover,compared with neutral stimuli condition,the reaction time of threatening stimuli has been longer in the money condition,indicating that the attention to money stimuli can buffer the the attention to threatening stimuli from the aspect of spaial attention.Experiment 2 has employed traditional RSVP paradigm to firstly test the attention priority to money stimuli or threatening stimuli in term of temporal attention,and found that compared with T2 as neutral stimuli,T2 as money stimuli and threatening stimuli have had the graeter accuracy,indicating that money stimuli and threatening stimuli have taken more cognitive resources than neutral stimuli;secundly,compared with T1 as neutral stimulicondition,threatening stimuli(T2)have had the lower accuracy in the money stimuli condition,indicating that the attention to money stimuli can buffer the the attention to threatening stimuli from the aspect of temporal attention,and vice verse.Experiment 3 has employed RSVP paradigm for two sequences to further test the attention priority to money stimuli or threatening stimuli in term of spatio-temporal attention,and found that compared with T2 as neutral stimuli,T2 as money stimuli and threatening stimuli have had the graeteraccuracy,indicating that money stimuli and threatening stimuli have taken more cognitive resources than neutral stimuli;what’s more,compared with T1 as neutral stimuli condition,threatening stimuli(T2)have had the lower accuracy in the money stimuli condition,indicating that the attention to money stimuli can buffer the the attention to threatening stimuli from the aspect of temporal attention,but attention to threatening stimuli can not produce the similar effect on money stimuli,which is different from the result of experiment 2.The conclusions of this study are as follows: 1)compared with neutral stimulus,money and threatening stimuli occupy more cognitive resources of individuals;2)compared with the money stimuli,the threatening stimuli have more competitive advantages in space and time;3)from the perspective of space competition and time competition,it is found that both money stimuli and threatening stimuli have evolutionary significance,and the attention of money stimuli will produce interference effect on the attention of threatening stimuli.Results support the social resources theory of money and evolution theory.