Attentional bias to threatening information has been considered to be one of the cognitive features of anxiety mood. Although Bower's associative network theory (1981, 1991) has been used to explain attentional bias, Bower's theory is insufficient to explain the maintenance of anxiety mood. The present study aimed to investigate whether activation of a network was maintained by emotional words acquired through attentional bias. Thirty-four undergraduates who served as participants were induced into a positive mood (Positive Condition) or a negative mood (Negative Condition) through music induction and the Velten induction method. Results of a dot-probe task revealed that reaction time to probes following negative words was faster than to probes following neutral words in the Negative Condition, while reaction time to probes following positive words was not significantly different from reaction time to that of neutral words in the Positive Condition. Further, attentional bias was observed only in the negative condition. Subjective mood judgement results revealed that only negative mood was maintained in the Negative Condition. These results suggest that selective attention to threatening information can maintain a negative mood.
