Recognizing the Bank Robber and Spotting the Difference: EmotionalState and Global vs. Local Attentional Set Pacheco Unguetti, Antonia Pilar Acosta Mesas, Alberto Lupiáñez Castillo, Juan global-local processing face recognition task spot-the-difference task mood induction anxiety induction self-reported anxiety This study was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Universidad de las Islas Baleares (to A. P. Pacheco-Unguetti), and research grants funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and the Junta de Andalucía (P07-SEJ-03299 to A. Acosta, CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CSD2008–00048, PSI2011–22416 and PSI2008–03595PSIC to J. Lupiáñez). In two experiments (161 participants in total), we investigated how current moodinfluences processing styles (global vs. local). Participants watched a video ofa bank robbery before receiving a positive, negative or neutral induction, andthey performed two tasks: a face-recognition task about the bank robber asglobal processing measure, and a spot-the-difference task using neutral pictures(Experiment-1) or emotional scenes (Experiment-2) as local processing measure.Results showed that positive mood induction favoured a global processing style,enhancing participants’ ability to correctly identify a face evenwhen they watched the video before the mood-induction. This shows that, besidesinfluencing encoding processes, mood state can be also related to retrievalprocesses. On the contrary, negative mood induction enhanced a local processingstyle, making easier and faster the detection of differences between nearlyidentical pictures, independently of their valence. This dissociation supportsthe hypothesis that current mood modulates processing through activation ofdifferent cognitive styles. 2025-01-21T09:12:03Z 2025-01-21T09:12:03Z 2014 journal article Published version: Pacheco-Unguetti AP, Acosta A, Lupiáñez J. Recognizing the Bank Robber and Spotting the Difference: EmotionalState and Global vs. Local Attentional Set. The Spanish Journal of Psychology. 2014;17:E28. https://doi.org/10.1017/sjp.2014.32 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/99807 10.1017/sjp.2014.32 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Cambridge University Press