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People’s emotions signal to them what is important in their environment. Emotions influence how people think and act, in part by influencing how people view the world around them. Given the multitude of stimuli in the environment, the ability to selectively pay attention to important and relevant informa-tion is crucial for survival (van der Heijden, 1992). Attention, therefore, essentially ties cognition to emotion and motivation (Simon, 1994). There is substantial evidence for the link between emotion and visual attention (for reviews, see Mathews & MacLeod, 1994; Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1997). However, the general mechanism that links emotion to visual attention has yet to be identified. The research presented in this article uncovered important aspects of this mechanism by testing the effects of anger on visual attention to threats and rewards