Abstract: Optimism is an important concept in Positive Psychology. Scheier & Carver (1985) proposed the concept of dispositional optimism, which refers to the personality traits that have a total positive expectation for the future. Previous studies have shown that optimists are more positive in their lives, can focus on the problem itself, and strive to seek the solutions that results in higher achievement and healthier state. Therefore, some researchers began to explore the cognitive mechanisms under the positive behaviors of optimists. Emotional words were used previously as distractor to examine whether optimists can effectively suppress them in order to explore the attention characteristics of optimists. However, previous studies have the following three shortcomings. Firstly, they used the Stroop paradigm, in which obvious interference was missing between the word’s color and its meaning. Secondly, previous studies did not answer whether optimists could suppress the neutral information. Finally, the past studies investigated the distractor suppression of emotional information by the dichotomy of optimistic and pessimistic which could not provide the dynamic changes of suppression on the different optimism levels. . Because of the complexity on groups and conditions, this present study examined the distractor inhibition of optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic subjects through two experiments. Positive and negative emotional words are used in Experiment 1, while the neutral (living and non-living) words in Experiment 2. In first, we filtered out 54 optimistic, neutral and pessimistic participants respectively by the Life Orientation Test-Revised which was randomly divided into two groups to participate in our Experiment 1 (24 people per group) and Experiment 2 (30 people per group) respectively. Participants were asked to respond to the prime and probe target for the positive or negative judgment in Experiment 1 and for a living and non-living judgment in Experiment 2. The target in the prime and probe display is red, and the distractor is green which are located directly above or below the fixation point randomly. Experiment 1 was designed using a 2×2×3 three-factor mixed design. The within-subjects variables were the valence of emotional word for probe target (positive, negative) and the prime condition (consistent valence, inconsistent valence); the between-subjects variable was group (optimistic, neutral, pessimistic). Experiment 2 was designed using a 2×3 two-factor mixed design. The within-subjects variables were the relationship between the prime distractor and the probe target (consistent category, inconsistent category); the between-subjects variable is group (optimistic, neutral, pessimistic). The result of Experiment 1 was that the optimistic group had a significant negative effect when the prime distractor was a negative emotion word, the pessimistic group had a significant negative effect when that was positive, and whether the prime distractor is positive or negative, the significant negative effects was observed in the neutral group. In experiment 2, the optimistic group did not show a negative prime effect, and both the pessimistic and the neutral group showed significantly negative effects. The present study demonstrates that optimists do not implement distractor inhibition on the positive and neutral information. It may be related to the maintenance of attention on these stimuli and the positively cognitive patterns of optimists. This study provides some evidences for the positive and pragmatic behavior of optimistic individuals.

Key words: optimistic personality, distractor inhibition, negative priming, attentional bias

摘要： 本研究采用负启动范式，从乐观特质连续谱上选择乐观、中性和悲观三组个体，考察他们对情绪和中性词的分心抑制。实验一以情绪词为材料发现，当启动分心词为负性时，乐观组出现负启动；分心词为正性时悲观组出现负启动；无论分心词为正或负，中性组均出现了负启动。实验二以中性词为材料发现，仅悲观组和中性组出现负启动。说明乐观个体对正性和中性信息不实施分心抑制。这可能与注意在这些刺激上的维持及乐观个体拥有积极的认知图式有关。本研究为乐观个体积极而务实的行为提供了一定依据。

关键词: 乐观特质 分心抑制 负启动效应 注意偏向