When stimuli with negative, positive, and without emotional content compete for attention, the attentional system prioritizes negative stimuli in early stages of processing, serving as a survival mechanism in response to potential threats. However, the persistence or reversal of this attentional bias towards positive stimuli during later processing stages remains unclear. To address this question, we used eye tracking technology to examine how the simultaneous presentation of stimuli, encompassing negative and positive emotional content alongside emotionally neutral stimuli, while controlling for the presence of humans, neutral (humans in non-emotional activities), and control stimuli (inanimate objects), affects both early and late attentional patterns in observers. These effects were tested in a free-viewing task involving a sample of 122 participants (64 men, 58 women) without affective disorders, data were taken between 2022 and 2023. Our results showed that negative stimuli elicited quicker initial fixation and a higher count of first fixations compared to positive, neutral, and control stimuli. Moreover, negative stimuli led to longer fixation durations and greater overall number of fixations than positive and non-emotional stimuli. Notably, emotional stimuli consistently exhibited a higher attentional preference over non-emotional stimuli, and stimuli featuring human faces, even devoid of emotional context, garnered greater attentional preference than inanimate objects.