Transportation

How We Feel About a Billboard Can Impact Our Driving

But not exactly in the way you might think.
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Research suggests that human emotion has an impact on cognition. If you’re in an emotional state – happy, angry, sad – that can influence how you perform complex tasks, how long it takes you to search for something or to react to a stimulus.

Consider the task of driving, which demands all of the above (multi-tasking, close attention, quick reactions). As it turns out, driving can be susceptible to "emotional distraction" too, and from a seemingly insignificant source: roadside billboards hawking sunny beach vacations or warning of lung cancer.