When emotions disturb the localization of road elements: Effects of anger and sadness

• We examined the effect of three mood states on the localization of road elements.
• Anger slowed down the localization times.
• Sadness increased the error rate.

While driving the activation of particular schemata induces an attentional focus where road users and road elements can be expected. Moreover, negative emotions can interfere with the information processing and the management of attentional resources leading to inattention.We compared two negative emotions according to the arousal dimension (exciting versus calming) rather than according to the hedonic value. Three mood states (anger, sadness and neutral) have been induced to reveal their effects on the localization of road elements. We used a modified version of the jumble scenes paradigm to provide evidence for the existence of driving-related schemata which appeared to be guiding visual search. The results reported here revealed that the three groups take more or less advantage of the use of their visual schemata to localize road elements. Sadness increased the localization error rate. Participants induced in anger, were slower to locate road elements than participants induced in sadness and in neutral mood. These results are congruent with the fact that drivers exposed to anger-could be slower to detect atypical hazards. Future studies should go deeper in the understanding of how emotional states regulate attentional capacities.