How the dimension of negative emotional motivation influences time perception: The mediating role of attention control and attention bias

In the research about the effect of emotion on time perception, researchers focus on the effects of valence and arousal. However, the inconsistent results found that the effect of emotion on time perception could not be fully explained only from the perspective of valence and arousal. Gable introduced the factor of emotion motivation to investigate the effect of emotion on time perception. How motivation influences time perception has gradually become a major scientific problem. However, the mechanism by which the dimensions of emotional motivation affected time perception remained unclear. In the present study, we explored the effect of dimensions of negative emotional motivation on time perception and its potential mechanisms (attention control and attention bias) based on the direction of negative emotional motivation and intensity of withdrawal-motivation emotion. The present research included two studies. Study 1 recruited 62 college students and explored the influence of the negative emotional motivation direction ( approach-motivation emotion, withdrawal-motivation emotion, and neutral stimulus) on time perception. Study 2 recruited 61 college students and explored the influence of the intensity of withdrawal-motivation emotion (high intensity, low intensity, and neutral stimulus) on time perception. In the two studies, emotional pictures were used to induce the direction and intensity of emotional motivation.; the point detection paradigm was used to measure attentional bias; the Flanker task was used to measure attention control; and the time reproduction task was used to measure time perception. Finally, we constructed a mediation model with the emotional motivation direction or emotional motivation intensity as independent variables, attention control and attention bias as mediating variables, and time perception as dependent variable. The results showed that (1) Approach-motivation emotion underestimated the duration, and withdrawal-motivation emotion overestimated the duration. Meanwhile, there was an overestimation of duration for the high intensity withdrawal-motivation emotion, as opposed to low intensity. (2) Attention disengagement and attention control played multiple mediating roles in the influence of the direction of emotional motivation on time perception at 700 ms, 1700 ms, and 2700 ms. Specifically, compared with withdrawal-motivation emotion, approach-motivation emotion inhibited the level of attention control and showed more intensity in attention disengagement difficulty, leading to an underestimation of the duration. (3) Attention alert mediated the influence of the intensity of emotional motivation on the time perception at 700ms. Specifically, compared with the low intensity, the high intensity of withdrawal-motivation emotion showed greater attention alert, which led to an overestimation of the duration. In conclusion, the results showed that the direction of emotional motivation determined the direction of time distortion, and the intensity of emotional motivation determined the degree of time distortion at 700ms. Meanwhile, it revealed the internal mechanism of the dimension of emotional motivation on time perception, refined the role of attention resources in time perception, and further enriched the attentional gate model. Specifically, adjusting attention bias and attention control is an important way to adjust the influence of emotion on time perception.