Sadness and fear, but not happiness, motivate inhibitory behaviour: the influence of discrete emotions on the executive function of inhibition

ABSTRACT

Inhibition, an executive function, is critical for achieving goals that require suppressing unwanted behaviours, thoughts, or distractions. One hypothesis of the emotion and goal compatibility theory is that emotions of sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control. Across Experiments 1–4, we tested this hypothesis by inducing a happy, sad, fearful, and neutral emotional state prior to completing an inhibition task that indexed a specific facet of inhibition (oculomotor, resisting interference, behavioural, and cognitive). In Experiment 4, we included an anger induction to examine whether valence or motivational-orientation best-predicted performance. We found support that fear and sadness enhanced inhibition except when inhibition required resisting interference. We argue that sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control aiding the detection and analysis of problems (i.e. sadness) or threats (i.e. fear) within one’s environment. In sum, this work highlights the importance of identifying how negative emotions can be beneficial for and interact with specific executive functions influencing down-stream processing including attention, cognition, and memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• inhibition
• executive function
• motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Public significance statement

Our work demonstrated that the emotions of sadness and fear, compared to happiness, are beneficial to inhibiting behaviour, and the importance of using different tasks to assess inhibition. States of sadness and fear due to enhanced inhibition may help to reduce distraction of non-goal relevant information, freeze in the presence of danger, and reduce unwanted behaviours. The larger significance of this work suggests that everyday emotions can have powerful influences on our thoughts and behaviour.

Notes

1 Experiments 1–4 also included a Stroop task to measure psychological depletion. However, given the issues surrounding the measurement of psychological depletion and replicability, we felt it appropriate to remove this aspect of the study. The Stroop task was completed after the mood manipulation check. Task information and data can be obtained by emailing the corresponding author.

2 Although reaction time (RT) is not the dependent variable of interest, we ran the same analysis as accuracy but with RT. Levine's test revealed a significant effect, F(3, 137) = 6.027, p = 0.001. The Kruskal-Wallis test yielded a significant effect for emotin, H(3, 141) = 9.344, p = 0.025. Pairwise comparisons revealed that the sadness condition responded faster than the happy (p = 0.017) and neutral (p = 0.016) conditions. No other effects were observed (p’s > 0.060). Thus, there was no speed-accuracy trade-off, but rather the opposite, sadness was more accurate and produced faster responses.

3 Analysis was also conducted using a repeated measures ANOVA with the Control vs. Inhibition trials entered as within factors and emotion as the between factors. The interaction was significant, F(3, 151) = 4.367, p = 0.006, η_p² = 0.080. No effect of emotion was observed, F(3, 151) = 0.326, p = 0.807, η_p² = 0.006. Control trials were faster than inhibition trials, F(1, 151) = 25.313, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.144.

4 An additional analysis was conducted using a repeated measures ANOVA with trial type (control vs. inhibition) as the within-subjects variable and emotion condition as the between-subjects variable. The trial type main effect was significant with control trials being faster than inhibition trials, F(1,146) = 87.934, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.376. There was a significant emotion by trial type interaction, F(3, 146) = 4.827, p = 0.003, η_p² = 0.090.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.