Resilience and attentional biases: what you see may be what you get

Abstract

Research suggests that, during stress, resilient individuals use positive emotion regulation strategies and experience a greater number of positive emotions than those who are less resilient. Therefore, differences could be expected in attentional biases towards emotional stimuli based on resilience. The current study investigated attentional biases towards neutral, negative and positive images in response to varying levels of resilence and mood induction conditions (neutral, negative and positive). Sixty participants viewed a series of pre and post-mood induction slides in order to measure attentional biases to emotional stimuli. The study provided evidence for the presence of trait and state congruent attentional biases. More resilient individuals demonstrated an initial bias towards positive stimuli and once emotion was aroused, the bias was away from negative stimuli. Additionally, mood congruent attentional biases were observed for participants induced into positive and negative mood states. Implications as they apply to research and clinical practice are discussed.