1Max Wertheimer Minerva Center for Cognitive Studies, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
Psychol Sci. 2014 Feb;25(2):494-502. doi: 10.1177/0956797613510725. Epub 2013 Dec 19.
The positive effect of losses on performance has been explained as stemming from the increased weighting of losses relative to gains. We examine an alternative possibility whereby this effect is mediated by attentional processes. Using the dual-task paradigm, we expected that positive effects of losses on performance would emerge under attentional scarcity and diffuse to a concurrently presented task. In Study 1, decision performance was compared for a task that involved either gains or losses and was performed either alone or as a secondary task. The results showed a significant 40% improvement in performance in the loss condition, but only under conditions of resource scarcity, when the task was a secondary one. In Study 2, the same task was presented as a primary task. Again, losses were associated with improved performance in the secondary task. Given that this secondary task did not include losses, these findings demonstrate an attentional spillover effect.
损失对绩效的积极影响可以解释为源于损失相对于收益的权重增加。我们考察了另一种可能性，即这种影响是通过注意力过程来介导的。使用双重任务范式，我们预计损失对绩效的积极影响将在注意力稀缺和扩散到同时呈现的任务时出现。在研究 1 中，我们比较了涉及收益或损失的任务，该任务单独执行或作为次要任务执行时的决策表现。结果表明，在资源稀缺时，当任务是次要任务时，损失条件下的表现显著提高了 40%。在研究 2 中，相同的任务作为主要任务呈现。同样，在次要任务中，损失与绩效的提高相关。鉴于这个次要任务不包括损失，这些发现表明存在注意力溢出效应。
