Irrelevant happy faces facilitate and interfere with inhibitory control under a narrow and broad scope of attention, respectively

Inhibitory control refers to the ability to suppress a pre-potent response. Studies investigating the role of emotional information in inhibitory control have yielded conflicting results. Some studies have shown that positive emotion, compared to negative, facilitates inhibitory control, while other studies have shown opposite effects. We propose a resolution to this debate by positing that the scope of attention with which emotional information is processed could elucidate these mixed outcomes. A larger scope of attention (global scope of attention) has been linked to positive emotions, and a narrow scope of attention (local scope of attention) has been linked to negative emotions. We combined a stop-signal task with a global-local Navon task. Participants were tasked with detecting a target presented within either a global or local scope of attention (letters H, S, and T). Occasionally, they encountered a stop-signal with irrelevant angry, happy, or neutral facial expressions. Results revealed that under a global attentional scope, happy facial expressions impaired inhibitory control compared to angry expressions; conversely, under a local attentional scope, happy faces facilitated inhibitory control relative to angry faces. Notably, predisposition toward a local or global attentional scope, as measured by a separate global–local disposition task, did not modulate these effects. We replicated our results in Experiment 2 using hierarchical stimuli made up of digits (6, 9, and 8) and controlling for other task-specific variables. Collectively, our findings emphasize the pivotal role of attentional scope in determining the impact of emotional information on cognitive processes, specifically inhibitory control.