Modulatory effects of goal relevance on emotional attention reveal that fear has a distinct value

Threat-related stimuli can capture attention. However, it remains debated whether this capture is automatic or is modulated by the goal-relevance of emotion. To address this question, we compared attentional biases to emotional faces using a dot-probe task (DPT) where emotion was never goal-relevant (Experiment 1, n = 40) or made directly task-relevant by means of interspersed induction trials (Experiments 2-3, n = 40 and 41, respectively). Moreover, the contingency between the DPT and induction trials was either partial (Experiment 2) or full (Experiment 3). Eye-tracking was used to ascertain that the emotional cue and the subsequent target were processed with peripheral vision. Experiments 1 and 2 both showed that negative faces captured attention, with faster target processing for fear valid than fear invalid trials, but also for happy invalid than happy valid trials. Importantly, this preferential spatial orienting to negative emotion was not observed in Experiment 3, where the goal relevance of emotion was high. However, in that experiment, fearful faces produced a specific attentional bias during the DPT, which was mostly driven by the induction trials themselves. Collectively, these results suggest that when goal relevance of emotion is high, the rapid and automatic orienting toward negative emotion vanishes. Nonetheless, in this situation, fearful faces exert a distinct modulatory influence on the control of spatial attention.