Safety first: Instrumentality for reaching safety determines attention allocation under threat

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Emotional Processing

Background:

• Traditional theories posit attention prioritizes threatening stimuli.
• This study proposes attention prioritizes goal-instrumental events, particularly safety-seeking actions in threatening contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether attention prioritizes instrumental safety signals over threat signals.
• To determine if the instrumentality of an event for achieving safety dictates attentional allocation under threat.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an attentional cueing paradigm with threat cues (aversive noises) and instrumental safety signals.
• Employed three experiments manipulating the presence and action-relevance of threat and safety cues.

Main Results:

• Attention was found to prioritize instrumental safety signals over threat signals (Experiment 1).
• This prioritization held even when controlling for general action relevance (Experiment 2).
• When actions toward threat allowed threat avoidance, threat signals were prioritized (Experiment 3).

Conclusions:

• Attentional allocation under threat is determined by the instrumentality of stimuli for reaching safety.
• Findings challenge purely threat-based attention models, emphasizing goal-directed processing.