More on mood, emotional reactivity, and executive function: Student Martyn Gabel publishes follow-up work in Motivation and Emotion

In a follow-up to Gabel & McAuley (2018), we now provide more compelling evidence that negative mood has the potential to help or hinder performance on some kinds of EF tasks pending one's level of emotional reactivity. Our work suggests that emotional reactivity is an important moderator of the interplay between affect and cognition - perhaps because it influences whether a bad mood increases cognitive load (e.g., for low-reactive individuals) or serves as an informational cue that promotes analytic thinking (e.g., for high-reactive individuals). Our newest study was recently published in the journal Motivation and Emotion as is viewable here.