New research suggests that images related to pleasure or winning attract attention from demanding tasks, while equally intense but negative images and those associated with losing can be fully ignored.

Researchers from the University College London found that people were highly distracted by emotional images, whether positive or negative, when the search was easy. However when the search was harder and demanded high focus of attention people were able to completely ignore the negative images, while the positive images continued to be highly distracting.

Positive images included graphic photographs of romantic scenes, happy faces, and neutral faces that were previously associated with winning points in a betting task. Negative images included gory photographs, angry faces and neutral faces previously associated with losing points in the betting task.

"If someone is busy, the best way to capture their attention is with something related to pleasure" study author Professor Nilli Lavie said in a statement. "For example adverts from charities often use images of suffering to encourage donations. Our study suggests that these images could be overlooked by people who are engaged in other activities such as using their phones, reading the newspaper, or forwarding their TV recordings to resume the program they were watching. To capture the attention from other activities, charities could consider using more positive images such as happy people whose lives have been improved by donations."

For the study, researchers had 51 volunteers complete attention tasks involving "target" items. They were shown positive and negative images.

The effect was seen not only with intrinsically positive images but also neutral images that were associated with wining in a betting game. Six neutral face images were used with different odds of winning or losing points. Participants were asked to choose between different pairs to maximize points, but these did not represent real money. By the end of the 15-minute game, the patterns of 'winning' and 'losing' faces were clear; participants consistently chose faces with high odds of winning and low odds of losing.

"The attention-grabbing power of images associated with winning meaningless points is staggering," Lavie said. "While people were able to ignore graphic images of mutilated bodies during the more difficult task, neutral, expressionless faces associated with winning still distracted them. People appear to be tuned to the prospects of wining. This could suggest a new way of marketing as any neutral image such as a brand logo can be used to capture attention, if the consumer is offered to play in some betting game and the image is associated with wining."

The findings are detailed in the journal Emotion.