Abstract
It has been suggested that positive moods broaden and negative moods narrow the breadth of attention. However, which processing stages are responsible for these effects is still unclear. In this paper, we review previous behavioral and electrophysiological studies that addressed the effect of moods on the breadth of attention. First, we summarize the definition of moods and several procedures of inducing and measuring moods. Second, we describe behavioral studies that examined how positive and negative moods modulate the breadth of attention. Third, we review studies in which event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured to examine the processing stages that were responsible for these effects. Finally, we propose future research directions for understanding the mutual influence process between moods and attention.
