Prioritised self-referential processing is modulated by emotional arousal. Issue 5 (May 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Qian, Haoyue; Wang, Zhiguo; Li, Chao; Gao, Xiangping
• Is Part Of: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. Volume 73:Issue 5(2020)
• Page Start: 688
• Page End: 697
• Publication Date: 2020-05
• Subjects: Self-referential bias -- mood -- valence -- arousal -- self-prioritisation effect; Psychology, Experimental -- Periodicals; Psychophysiology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 150.72405
• DOI: 10.1177/1747021819892158
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1747-0218

Abstract

Stimuli related to the self are processed more efficiently in a variety of cognitive tasks. Recent studies have shown that this self-referential processing bias is modulated by emotion. However, a clear understanding of how emotional valence and arousal affect self-referential processing is still lacking. With a label–shape matching task, Experiment 1 measured a self-prioritisation effect in four different mood states. The results revealed stronger self-prioritisation effects in moods with higher arousal levels and a reliable correlation between the self-prioritisation effect and the arousal level reported by the participants; however, the effect of emotional valence was not statistically reliable. Experiment 2 further showed that alerting cues, known to raise arousal level, effectively increased the self-prioritisation effect in the same label–shape matching task. Experiment 3 clarified that alerting cues do not affect reward processing in a similar label–shape matching task, suggesting that arousal may selectively modulate self-referential processing. These observations provide clear evidence that emotional arousal modulates self-referential processing.