Brain waves reveal why negative emotions hijack attention in borderline personality traits

Summary: Have you ever lost your focus just because someone looked mad at you? A new study shows that for people with borderline personality traits, negative emotions can actually hijack their brain waves.

Researchers had college students solve visual puzzles while looking at happy or angry faces. When the puzzles were easy, everyone did fine. But when the puzzles were hard and featured angry faces, people with borderline traits took much longer and made more mistakes.

By tracking their brain waves, scientists saw that these individuals struggled to handle the distraction early on. Their brains had to work way harder to process the angry faces, and eventually, their mental energy got completely overloaded. This helps explain why negative feelings can suddenly ruin focus and performance during difficult tasks.

Source: psypost URL: psypost.org/brain-waves-reveal-why-negative-emotions-hijack-attention-in-borderline-personal/ (opens in new tab)