Who is more prone to distraction? A simple test to evaluate the interference of emotional stimuli in females and males

Abstract

In order to quantify gender differences in attentional capability depending on the presence of emotional stimuli, the effectiveness of responses to a target stimulus were analysed between groups. Fifty-two men and 52 women carried out two experiments based on the Eriksen flanker task. Half the participants were instructed to indicate the orientation of an arrow without flankers. The other half carried out the same task, but in this case the arrow was flanked by images with sexual or relaxing content. The study suggests that men are faster than women in discriminating the spatial orientation of a relevant stimulus, despite being more prone to distraction by adjacent stimuli. Regarding emotional interference, which is equivalent in both genders, it is higher for images with sexual content compared to those with relaxing content.