A recent study explore how strong emotions affect thinking. When conflict or upset arises with someone close, it can dominate our mental bandwidth. The brain can’t simply pause the problem while we wait for resolution.
Researchers in emotion and cognition have long noted links between feeling and thinking. The broaden and build theory suggests that being upset narrows attention to fine details, while happiness creates a broad, rosy view. The theory argues that thoughts and emotions are tightly linked and hard to separate.
But there are caveats. Leiden University researchers Martin Kolnes and Andero Uusberg (2025) say that testing broaden and build in the lab is tricky. Real life involves mixed emotions and ongoing experiences, and people often must focus even when they’d rather not.
To capture more realistic dynamics, the researchers used a clever method from emotion and perception studies: the Navon task. This simple measure probes how widely attention spreads when someone is emotionally aroused. Participants first wrote about a recent positive or negative event, then completed Navon tasks. Their current mood was also recorded to rule out mood effects.
Results showed that negative prompts tended to tax cognitive resources. As the authors put it, emotional stimuli can attract and even lock up cognitive resources, hindering performance on subsequent tasks.
In everyday life, this drain can be more consequential. If you’re driving or biking while ruminating about a conflict, your situational awareness and reaction time may suffer.
Is it ever beneficial to feel negative emotions? Processing emotions can support mental clarity, especially when you don’t need to multitask. Acknowledging feelings, allowing time to process them, and, if possible, repairing the relationship can help free mental space for other tasks.
Related topics
