Fear of Missing Out and attentional capture by distractor associated with social reward
Résumé
On the one hand, stimuli paired with social reward can capture attention even when their processing is irrelevant to,
or even detrimental for the task at hand. On the other
hand, individual differences exist in how we respond to social reward, and the role of the individual’s Fear of Missing
Out (FoMO) in getting involved in social reward seeking behaviors has recently been the subject of particular interest.
The current study investigated whether FoMO could predict attentional capture by socially rewarded distractors.
Participants performed a visual search task on ecological
driving pictures in which stimuli previously associated with
social reward (neutral or smiling faces) appeared as distractors on a smartphone screen. Individual FoMO scores
positively predicted attentional capture by high-reward
stimuli, but only under situations favorable to distraction
(foggy scenes). Individual and contextual factors therefore
seem to interact to determine whether or not distraction
by socially rewarded stimuli will occur.