Attentional traits towards positive or negative emotional stimuli among students with different dispositional coping

Objective To explore attentional traits towards positive or negative emotional stimuli among students with different dispositional coping,and to provide new ideas for psychological counseliy workers to improve coping tendencies.Methods Eighty-six college students were divided into two groups according to the score on Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire.Among them,37 were classified as positive dispositional coping and 49 negative one.All participants were randomly assigned to positive or negative emotional stimuli.Attentional bias scores were recorded by the dot probe task.Results Attentional bias scores were higher towards positive than negative emotional stimuli for positive dispositional coping group (19.44±25.91 vs 2.26±25.27) (F=5.70,P<0.05),and for negative dispositional coping group (9.96±24.67 vs 7.88±25.12) (F =4.53,P<0.05).Towards positive emotional stimuli,positive dispositional coping subjects showed significant attentional bias (19.44±25.91)(t=3.093,P<0.01) and difficulty disengaging attention (12.57± 19.12)(t =2.71,P<0.05) to positive pictures.Towards negative emotional stimuli,negative dispositional coping subjects showed difficulty disengaging attention to positive pictures (12.93±17.33) (t=3.34,P<0.01).Conclusion Positive dispositional coping subjects show an attentional bias towards positive emotional stimuli as well as deep levels of attention processing,while those negative coping individuals might endorse an attentional bias and deep levels of attention processing towards negative emotional stimuli.