Positive Extension Effects Of Emotion On Cognition

Abstract: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion offers a new view of their functional significance, beyond those functions shared with other positive emotion. This theory posits that distinct positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love not only share the feature of broadening individual's momentary thought—action repertoires, but also share the featureof building individual's personal resources, including physical resources (e g, physical skills,health), the intellectual resources (knowledge, psychological theory, the implementation of control),social resources (friendship, and social support networks) and psychological resources (mentalresilience, optimism and creativity). Generally negative emotion will narrow the momentarythought-action repertoires, and narrow the scope of individual attention, the individual in the contextof the time only a certain behavior, and mobilize individual physical energy to specific environmental challenges. And positive emotion in the general conditions under managed to breakthrough the individual's narrowed thought-action repertoires, expand the scope of individualattention and enhance cognitive flexibility to update and expansion of individual cognitive map.Although the positive emotion broaden individual's momentary thought-action repertoires andthe negative emotion narrowed the negative emotion individual's momentary thought-action havereceived direct support in an initial experiment, many questions remain. For example, are theseeffects replicable, and do they extend to other measures of the breadth of thought-action repertoires?Is there broaden effects in positive emotion for working memory, mental rotation, problem-solving?In addition, whether is the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion covering all types of positive emotion? Whether is the cross-cultural consistency of this theory? Whether is the conditions in the broaden effects of positive emotion? And so on. The issues require further research to exploreand certification.This study selected the impact research of positive emotion on working memory, mental rotation, problem-solving . using two factors mixed design method, selecting undergraduate and second-year students of the Long Dong College in Gansu as subjects.The purpose of the study is to further test the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion, confirm the important role of positive emotions. The results show that:1. The working memory performance in positive emotional state not significantly higher than that of negative emotional state. The result requires further research to certification because of some doubt.2. Mental rotation performance in positive emotional state of was significantly higher than that of negative emotional state, proving that positive emotion enhanced mental rotatipn ability.3. The problem-solving performance in positive emotional state of was significantly higher than that of neutral and negative emotional state, proving that positive emotion enhanced problem-solving ability.The value of research: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion is further certificated in this study, and the results of past research further improved a certain extent, the emotional content is rich too. It proved theoretical support for the pleasure education.