Abstract:

Defocusing is a strategy to reduce focusing illusion by diverting individual’s attention away from focal events or factors. How to make use of defocusing to improve our experienced well-being has become a focus in positive psychology. Defocusing can significantly alleviate different types of negative emotions, and its mechanism can be explained by distraction hypothesis and emotional processing theory. Furthermore, we recommend that future researches pay attention to the comparison of generic defocusing and self-relevant defocusing, the subsequent impact of defocusing on experienced well-being and the influence of re-focusing on experienced well-being.

Key words: defocusing, negative emotions, experienced well-being, distraction hypothesis, emotional processing theory