RT Journal Article
T1 Looking at the eyes of happiness: Positive emotions mediate the influence of life satisfaction on attention to happy faces
A1 Sánchez López, Álvaro
A1 Vázquez Valverde, Carmelo José
AB Despite significant advancements in the research of subjective well-being (SWB), little is known about its connection with basic cognitive processes. The present study explores the association between selective attention to emotional stimuli (i.e. emotional faces) and both the emotional and cognitive components of SWB (i.e. emotional well-being and satisfaction in life, respectively). Participants (N = 83) were asked to freely watch a series of 84 pairs of emotional (happy, angry, or sad) and neutral faces from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database.  Eye tracking methodology measured first fixations, number of fixations, and the time spent looking at emotional faces. Results showed that both the emotional and cognitive components of SWB were related to a general bias to attend to happy faces and avoid sad faces. Yet, bootstrapping analyses showed that positive emotions, rather than life satisfaction, were responsible for the positive information-processing bias. We discuss the potential functionality of these biases and their implications for research on positive emotions.
PB Taylor & Francis
SN 1743-9760
SN 1743-9779
YR 2014
FD 2014-04-22
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/99776
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/99776
LA eng
NO Sanchez, A. & Vazquez, C. (2014). Looking at the eyes of happiness: Positive emotions mediate the influence of life satisfaction on attention to happy faces, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(5), 435-448, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2014.910827
NO Spanish Ministry of Economy
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 may 2025