Children’s and adults’ beliefs about the impact of emotional intensity on cognitive performance.

In popular culture, positive emotions are often portrayed as performance enhancing (e.g., "happy students learn better"). However, the relationship between emotions and performance is not always straightforward. For instance, when positive emotions become too intense, they can harm cognitive performance. Do people's lay theories of emotions capture this complex relationship between emotions and performance? If so, how early in development do children grasp this nuanced relationship? In three preregistered experiments, we explored children's and adults' beliefs about the impact of different emotional states on attention in school. In Study 1a, we found that 5- to 7-year-old Canadian children (