Being Concerned With Well-Being and With Learning

Abstract The cognitive system is designed for knowledge and skill acquisition, but, as several researchers have pointed out, learning is also facilitated or hampered by emotions, moods, and feelings. Emotions are stored in memory along with declarative and procedural knowledge, and this information may be used as a gross discriminator to identify quickly problematic and nonproblematic situations. As such, emotions can be seen as action readiness changes that are linked to current concerns. They remind the person of past problematic or nonproblematic situations. When negative emotions create a pessimistic perceptual attitude, they may draw the learner's attention to task-irrelevant aspects that activate intrusive thoughts and create a concern for well-being rather than for learning. An optimistic perceptual attitude may lead to short-term learning intentions and to activity in the mastery mode.