Q53217

Prompt: Negative Reinforcement

Psychology shows that it doesn't take much to put you in a bad mood. Just reading the morning news can do it. Being in a bad mood slows your reaction time, and affects your basic cognitive abilities like speech, writing, and counting. If you read a depressing newspaper headline in the morning, you may perform worse at work throughout the day. There are two general explanations offered. One is that negative words are more distracting, and the other is that they are more threatening. According to both theories, the result is that fewer mental resources are available to identify the ink colors. Neither explanation appears to predict sustained effects. After the initial distraction or threat, people should be expected to return to identifying the ink colors of neutral words without a delay. Indeed, the few previous studies that have been done on the subject show that it does not matter whether people are shown negative or neutral words first. In a series of four experiments involving the emotional Stroop task, the researchers showed that these studies are biased by a quirk of the test's design as it is usually administered. In most cases, people are shown four or five negative words, along with four or five neutral words, in the test 10 to 12 times. The researchers found, after being shown the same negative word only twice, subjects were able to identify the ink color without a delay. On the other hand, when people are shown the negative words just once, they subsequently name the ink colors of neutral words more slowly. The existing theories can't account for these results.

References: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131125164747.htm

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