Approach-motivated positive affect reduces breadth of attention: Registered replication report of Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008)

This is an independent replication of a study conducted by Gable and Harmon-Jones [Gable, P. A., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2008). Approach-Motivated Positive Affect Reduces Breadth of Attention. Psychological Science, 19(5), 476-482]. In this influential paper, the authors demonstrated positive affect high in approach motivation to reduce the breadth of attention. The present replication study includes a direct replication of Experiment 2 from the original paper, comparing positive affect high in approach motivation with neutral affect, as well as a conceptual replication, using different affective and control stimuli and comparing positive affect high in approach motivation, positive affect low in approach motivation and neutral affect within one experiment. In both the direct and conceptual replication, we observed positive stimuli that were associated with high approach motivation to reduce attentional breadth in a Navon task when compared to control stimuli, thus replicating the effect reported by Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008). These results increase confidence in the generalizability of the original findings across cultures, as well as across different stimuli.