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The Emotional Attentional Blink as a Measure of Patriotism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2020

José Antonio Aznar-Casanova Open the ORCID record for José Antonio Aznar-Casanova [Opens in a new window] ,
José M. Gavilán Open the ORCID record for José M. Gavilán [Opens in a new window] ,
Manuel Moreno Sánchez  and
Juan Haro Open the ORCID record for Juan Haro [Opens in a new window]
José Antonio Aznar-Casanova*
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)
José M. Gavilán
Affiliation:
Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain)
Manuel Moreno Sánchez
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)
Juan Haro
Affiliation:
Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to José Antonio Aznar-Casanova. Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat de Psicologia. Departament de Cognició, Desenvolupament i Psicologia de l’Educació. Paseo el Valle de Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona (Spain). E- mail: jaznar2@ub.edu Phone: +34-933125145.
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Abstract

This study aims to explore whether the implicit processing of emotional symbols related to patriotic feeling may exert some effects on attention. Here, we have conducted an experiment using two interrelated tasks. First, we use flags with different meanings to participants for measuring the strength of the emotional attentional blink (EAB) within a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. Then, we use a “congruency judgments” subjective test, where we confront participants to judge the affinity between pairs of politician leaders and flags of different sign for community participants, while recording two physiological measures (Heart Rate Variance and Galvanic Skin Response) to evaluate the variations elicited by that confrontation. Results on the EAB task show a significant emotion induced blindness for emotional stimuli representing Catalan and Spanish patriotism (α = .05), while the effect does not appear for the stimulus representing neutral patriotism. The interaction “Flags x Patriotism” was significant, F(1, 51) = 4.62; p = .036; ηp2 = .083. Results on the second task show that measures derived from electrophysiological records are sensitive to patriotic feeling, both being complementary. In addition, by using measures of congruence, the “Leaders x Flags” interaction was significant, F(3.682, 125.204) = 53.55; p < .001; ηp2 = .612. Finally, a multiple linear regression model for each emotional inductor was verified for the Catalan case, using the EAB effect as criteria, R2Adjusted = .79; p < .001. Some theoretical and methodological aspects derived of this exploratory study are discussed.

Keywords

cognition-emotion relationshipemotional attentional blinkpatriotismphysiological measuresRSVP
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 23 , 2020 , e30
Copyright
© Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2020

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Footnotes

The authors thank the two reviewers of the manuscript for their valuable comments, which have undoubtedly enriched the work.

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