Hate and cognitive function

The major goal of the current study is to test whether the feelings of hate and love influence individuals’ visual attention by using a classical task – attentional blink (AB) task. The attentional blink means that in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), attention is temporarily undermined for new input when earlier relevant visual information is being processed. The potential effect of hate and love could be twofold: in the RSVP, the valence of the earlier visual stimulus (the name of a person participants hate or love) would affect the magnitude of the attentional blink; seeing a name of a person people hate or love might activate feelings of hate or love which might also affect the magnitude of the attentional blink. Another goal of the current study is to explore whether individual differences in social value orientation and dark triad variables are related to the activation of the feeling of hate, or once activated, related to the intensity and duration of hate. Thus, we want to explore whether these personality variables would moderate activation of the feelings and moderate the effects of hate on the attentional blink.