Froeber, K. & Dreisbach, G.
University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
There is increasing evidence that positive affect increases cognitive flexibility. However, results in the field are rather inconsistent. We therefore wanted to investigate the role of arousal for this positive affect effect to occur. To this end, a very simple response‐priming task with centrally presented predictive cues was used. Cue‐validity was 66%, and each trial was preceded by an affective picture(negative/high arousal, neutral, positive/high arousal, positive/low arousal). Results confirmed increased cognitive flexibility under positive affect: the cue‐validity effect after positive pictures with low arousal (but not so with high arousal) was significantly reduced. Furthermore, a main effect Picture was found reflecting significantly higher overall reaction times (RTs) after negative pictures as compared to positive pictures of the same arousal. This general RT increase after negative pictures cannot be explained by arousal alone because high arousal in combination with positive pictures actually decreased RTs. It follows that affect and arousal should be controlled for when affect effects are investigated.