Effects of positive and negative moods on helping tasks having pleasant or unpleasant consequences

A field study investigated the effects of positive and negative moods on subjects' willingness to perform helping tasks having pleasant or unpleasant consequences. Results indicated that procedures designed to induce either positive or negative moods facilitate helping when the task has pleasant consequences, but tend to inhibit helping when the task is likely to be unpleasant. The findings are consistent with the notion that many everyday acts of kindness (altruism) are interpretable as a form of hedonism. The implications of these outcomes for an activation model of mood-induced altruism are discussed.     

Causal attributions, sanctions, and normal mood variations

The causal-locus hypothesis (CLH) asserts that persons making internal attributions for failure and external attributions for success experience more negative postoutcome moods than persons making the opposite attributions. Three experiments assessed the CLH. Although outcomes consistently affected moods and attributions, attributions did not affect moods. Significant correlations consistent with the CLH were also infrequently obtained. Another theory, the sanctioned-object hypothesis (SOH), was proposed for understanding how causal attributions lead to mood changes. This hypothesis asserts that the application of positive or negative sanctions to objects in the perceptual field is a central determinant of mood and that attributions affect mood when their content and salience activate sanctioning processes. A fourth experiment evaluated the competing theories. The results supported the SOH but not the CLH. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding mood variations and the effects that moods have on the construction of attributions and for adopting methodological alternatives that may be valuable for future laboratory research studying mood variations.     

Dispositional and Situational Autonomy as Moderators of Mood and Creativity

Although previous research suggests that mood can influence creativity, the controversy about the effects of positive and negative moods has raged for years. This study investigated how the relationship between induced mood and creativity is moderated by dispositional and situational autonomy. It contrasted the different moderating effects of the 2 kinds of autonomy. In Experiment 1, 93 participants completed a questionnaire about dispositional autonomy and performed a creative task after watching 1 of 3 film clips, which were to induce positive, negative, or neutral moods. The results of experiment 1 indicated that positive moods prompted creativity and negative moods inhibited creativity when individuals were low in dispositional autonomy (low in autonomous orientation or high in impersonal orientation). In Experiment 2, 73 participants engaged in a game to manipulate levels of situational autonomy and induce positive or negative moods. The results of experiment 2 showed that positive moods fostered greater creativity than did negative moods when individuals were in full-autonomy condition. The different moderating effects of dispositional and situational autonomy are discussed.     

Mood and global-local focus: priming a local focus reverses the link between mood and global-local processing

Positive moods promote a focus on the forest (global focus) and negative moods, a focus on the trees (local focus). Is this well-established link fixed or variable? Does it reflect a direct influence of affect, as usually assumed, or is it frequently observed simply because a global perspective is often dominant? If affect serves as information about the value of currently accessible inclinations, and a global focus is generally the default perspective, then the global focus of positive affect and local focus of negative affect might be variable rather than fixed. Two experiments tested this hypothesis using different mood inductions, different tests of global-local focus, and different methods of inducing global and local perspectives. In each, we discovered that positive affect empowered whatever focus was momentarily dominant. Thus, whether individuals in happy moods saw the forest or the trees depended only on which of the two had been primed.     

Mood, source characteristics, and message processing: A mood-congruent expectancies approach

Based on two lines of research, a model is proposed to explain when individuals in a positive mood as well as individuals in a negative mood invest more or less effort in message processing. First, research has shown that moods affect likelihood estimates. That is, positive (negative) mood leads to a mood-congruent increase regarding the occurrence of positively (negatively) valenced events. Second, research has shown that mood-unrelated expectancies affect message processing. Combining both lines of research, I argue that mood-congruent expectancies also affect message scrutiny, that is, more effortful processing given expectancy disconfirmation rather than expectancy confirmation. This prediction was tested in two experiments involving initial information regarding source honesty and likability, respectively. As predicted, individuals in both positive and negative moods evinced more effortful message processing when initial information disconfirmed rather than confirmed expectancies. Thus, these results are consistent with a quite flexible view of individuals in both positive and negative moods regarding the effort invested in information processing.     

Interviewers’ Moods and Evaluations of Job Applicants: The Role of Applicant Qualifications1

Participants were induced to experience positive affect, negative affect, or no shift in current affect. Then they conducted a simulated job interview with an applicant (actually an assistant) who appeared to be highly qualified, ambiguously qualified, or unqualified for the job in question. It was predicted that interviewers’ moods would exert the strongest influence on ratings of the applicant when this person's qualifications were ambiguous. Results offered partial support for this hypothesis. When the applicant's qualifications were ambiguous, participants induced to experience positive affect rated this person higher on several dimensions than participants induced to experience negative affect. When the applicant appeared to be highly qualified for the job, in contrast, interviewers’ moods had no significant effect on their ratings of this person. Contrary to expectations, however, interviewers’ moods significantly influenced ratings of the applicant when this person appeared to be unqualified for the job in question. In this condition, participants induced to experience positive affect actually rated the applicant lower than those induced to experience negative affect. Several mechanisms that may have contributed to these results (e. g., tendencies toward mood maintenance, adoption of a positive-test strategy) are examined. In addition, practical implications of these findings for conducting job interviews and for the use of various impression-management techniques by applicants are discussed.     

DRM范式下心境一致性错误记忆的认知机制

本研究以自编情绪DRM词表为实验材料, 用音乐诱发正常大学生被试正性、负性和中性心境, 探讨在被试处于某种心境下时是否产生心境一致性错误记忆现象、预警能否减少心境一致性错误记忆的发生。结果表明, 正性关键诱饵在正性心境下的错误再认率显著高于中性和负性心境, 负性关键诱饵在负性心境下的错误再认率显著高于中性和正性心境, 说明正常被试也会产生心境一致性错误记忆; 预警和无预警条件下被试对关键诱饵和心境一致性关键诱饵的错误再认率无显著差异, 说明外显的预警提示并不能消除部分由无意识产生的错误记忆和心境一致性错误记忆。研究结果支持记忆的扩散激活理论和情感的联想网络理论。     

Age-related differences in profiles of mood-change trajectories

As a group, older adults report positive affective lives. The extent to which there are subgroups of older adults whose moods are less positive, however, is unclear. Our aim in the present study was to identify and characterize different subgroups of adults who exhibit distinct trajectories of mood change across a relatively short time period. Seventy-nine young and 103 older adults continuously reported their moods while viewing emotional and neutral faces. Cluster analysis revealed four subgroups of mood-change trajectories. Both the most positive and the most negative subgroups included more older than young adults (ps < .05), suggesting that not all older adults exhibit higher positive affect than young adults. Analyses of variance revealed that the most negative group exhibited slower processing speed, more state anxiety and neuroticism, and looked less at happy faces than the other groups (ps < .05). The results are discussed from an adult developmental perspective, focusing on the increased variability of mood trajectories in the older adults and whether this is a reflection of adaptive functioning or a potential harbinger of dysfunction.     

Within-person relationships between mood and creativity

State mood has been proposed as a facilitator of creative behavior. Whereas positive mood compared to neutral mood generally facilitates creative performance, mood effects are weaker and less consistent when positive mood is compared to negative mood. These inconsistent results may be due to focusing only on mood valence, while neglecting or confounding mood activation. The current study is based on the dual-pathway model, which describes separate roles for mood valence and mood activation in facilitating creativity. We used experience sampling methodology to investigate the concurrent and lagged effects of mood valence and activation on creative process engagement (CPE) within-person over time among individuals working on a long-term project requiring creativity. We also investigated the moderating effects of individual differences in goal orientation and supervisory support on within-person mood-creativity relationships. As expected, we found that activating positive and activating negative moods were positively associated with concurrent CPE, whereas deactivating moods of both valences were negatively related to CPE. Activating negative mood had a significant lagged effect on CPE, whereas activating positive mood did not. We also found that activating positive mood was more strongly related to concurrent CPE among individuals with high rather than low learning goal orientation. Further, activating positive mood interacted with prove goal orientation and supervisory support for creativity, such that activating positive mood had the strongest association with CPE when both prove goal orientation and supervisory support were high.     

Mood-related self-schemata and mood-congruity effects in autobiographical memory: A study of women with premenstrual syndrome

Everyday autobiographical memory and mood interactions were explored in a small clinical sample of women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and a matched control group. Subjects kept daily records of memorable events for two consecutive menstrual cycles. Two recognition memory tests were given after a one-cycle delay. Mood, or affect, was self-assessed retrospectively over a week, at the end of each day during data collection and at testing, and when events occurred. Women with PMS were more depressed and more negative (angry) than positive (experiencing bursts of energy) in their daily moods than controls. Memory accuracy was poorer overall for PMS than control subjects, although no direct effects of menstrual cycle phase on memory were found. Instead, mood affected memory indirectly through moodrelated self-schemata which subsequently mediated mood-congruity effects. Memory accuracy for events experienced in negative mood states and associated with negative affective reactions was higher for PMS subjects when tested in negative mood states than for controls. No group differences were found on events associated with positive affect or positive daily moods when mood state at the time of testing was also positive. Women with PMS processed information selectively from negative events and events experienced in negative moods compared to controls. Negative events and negative moods appeared to interfere with remembering for control subjects. Women in the control group appeared to be biased towards selectively remembering positive events and events experienced on days when their mood states were relatively positive.     

Effects of self-complexity on mood-incongruent recall

Some people cope with negative moods by retrieving positive memories, which is mood-incongruent recall. Though mood-incongruent recall is helpful for mood-regulation, the factors that influence people's ability to utilize mood-incongruent recall are not well understood. This study investigated whether complex knowledge structure is a factor for the ability of mood-incongruent recall, based on self-complexity. In the experiment, 50 participants were requested to recall positive memories in both neutral and negative moods. The results of this study indicated that self-complexity was an important factor associated with participants' ability to recall positive memories while they were in negative moods. Participants who rated high in self-complexity were those whose knowledge is structured in a complex way, recalled more highly positive memories in negative moods than in neutral moods. On the other hand, participants who were rated low in self-complexity with simple knowledge structures recalled memories with a lower extent of positivity in negative moods than those in neutral moods.     

Interactive Effects of Mood and Task Framing on Creative Generation

ABSTRACT

This study introduced a motivational compatibility account for the influence of mood on creative generation. Building upon the feelings-as-information framework, it was proposed that positive moods signal to individuals that they are safe, motivating them to take advantage of this presumed safety by seeking stimulation and incentives (i.e., having fun), whereas negative moods signal to individuals that there are problems at hand, motivating them to solve these problems. Based on these assumptions, it was predicted that positive and negative moods should enhance effort on creative generation tasks construed as compatible with the motivational orientations they respectively elicit. Specifically, positive, relative to negative, moods were predicted to enhance effort on tasks construed as fun and silly, whereas negative, relative to positive, moods were predicted to bolster effort on tasks construed as serious and important. Evidence for this model, and several of its underlying assumptions, was adduced in 3 experiments in which mood was manipulated and participants completed creative generation tasks that were framed as either fun or serious. Results are discussed with an eye toward addressing alternative theoretical explanations.     

Mood specific media use and emotion regulation: Patterns and individual differences

The present study examines moods in which individuals are most likely to utilize various forms of entertainment media and the emotion regulation tendencies that are associated with such preferences. Results of a questionnaire study (n = 229) show that mood specific media use may be captured by three factors: turning to media in a positive mood, in a negative mood or in a bored mood. Findings also show that various forms of difficulty regulating emotion (e.g., feeling out of control when upset) predict media use in negative or bored moods only. More specific analyses show that music use in negative moods is predicted by both positive indices (e.g., reflection tendencies) and negative indices of emotion regulation (e.g., rumination tendencies), while television use in negative moods is only predicted by negative indices of emotion regulation. Results are discussed in light of the psychological needs that selective media use may serve.     

Moods as spotlights: the influence of mood on accessibility effects

Three studies explore the manner in which one's mood may affect the use and impact of accessible information on judgments. Specifically, the authors demonstrated that positive and negative moods differentially influence the direction of accessibility effects (assimilation, contrast) by determining whether abstract traits or concrete actor-trait links are primed. Study 1 investigated the impact of positive versus negative mood on the judgmental impact of trait-implying behaviors and found that positive moods lead to assimilation and negative moods to contrast. In Study 2, this effect was replicated in a subliminal priming paradigm. In Study 3, it was demonstrated that the type of information activated by trait-implying behaviors is indeed mood dependent, such that abstract trait information is activated in a positive mood, whereas specific actor-trait links are activated in a negative mood.     

Affective synchrony: individual differences in mixed emotions

Most models of affect suggest either inverse or null associations between positivity and negativity. Recent work has highlighted situations that sometimes lead to mixed positive-negative affect. Focusing on the counterpart to these situational factors, the authors explore the individual-difference tendency toward mixed emotions, which they term affective synchrony. In five studies, the authors show that some individuals demonstrate affective synchrony (overlapping experience of positive and negative moods), others a-synchrony (positive and negative mood that fluctuate independently), and still others de-synchrony (positive and negative moods that function as bipolar opposites). These tendencies are stable over time within persons, vary broadly across individuals, and are associated with individual differences in cognitive representation of self and of emotions.     

Interactions of depressed college students with their roommates: not necessarily negative

Coyne's (1976b) interactional theory of the social environment's role in maintaining depression suggests that depressed people create negative affect in others. This leads to a pattern of interactions between depressed individuals and others that is aversive to both parties and becomes a vicious circle. We examined interactions of 15 depressed and 15 nondepressed college students with their roommates. On questionnaires, roommates did indicate more rejection, dislike, and avoidance of the depressed students than of the nondepressed students, consistent with Coyne's theory, and depressed-student-roommate interactions were more personally involved (higher percentage of self-disclosure) and less positive than nondepressed-student-roommate interactions. The moods of both depressed students and their roommates were worse than those of controls before the interaction but, contrary to expectation, improved over the course of the interaction, whereas the moods of nondepressed students and their roommates did not change significantly. Implications of these results for Coyne's theory are discussed.     

Affective guidance of intelligent agents: How emotion controls cognition

How do emotions and moods color cognition? In this article, we examine how such reactions influence both judgments and cognitive performance. We argue that many affective influences are due, not to affective reactions themselves, but to the information they carry about value. The specific kind of influence that occurs depends on the focus of the agent at the time. When making evaluative judgments, for example, an agent’s positive affect may emerge as a positive attitude toward a person or object. But when an agent focuses on a cognitive task, positive affect may act like feedback about the value of one’s approach. As a result, positive affect tends to promote cognitive, relational processes, whereas negative affect tends to inhibit relational processing, resulting in more perceptual, stimulus-specific processing. As a consequence, many textbook phenomena from cognitive psychology occur readily in happy moods, but are inhibited or even absent in sad moods (149).     

情绪对内隐刻板印象表达的调节

采用IAT范式探讨不同情绪对内隐刻板印象表达的调节作用：实验1通过音乐唤醒被试的不同弥散性情绪状态(悲伤vs.愉悦), 并操纵其即时观念(刻板一致vs.刻板冲突), 探讨二者对内隐性别刻板印象表达的影响。实验2通过视频诱发被试不同的指向性情绪(同情vs.厌恶), 研究其如何调节大学生对不同感染途径的艾滋病患者和病毒携带者的内隐刻板印象表达。在此基础上引入四重模型(Quad Model)分析技术, 进一步细化情绪的调节作用究竟发生在认知加工的自动加工过程还是控制加工过程, 以及不同情绪是通过哪些心理成分调节内隐刻板印象的表达。结果表明：(1)当即时观念与刻板印象内容一致时, 积极弥散性情绪促进内隐刻板印象的表达; 反之则会抑制其表达; (2)弥散性情绪通过调节认知加工的自动化加工过程, 进而调节内隐刻板印象的表达, 但未参与调节控制性加工过程; (3)积极效价的指向性情绪会抑制被试对艾滋病患者的内隐刻板印象表达, 消极效价的指向性情绪会促进其表达; (4)指向性情绪通过自动激活成分, 调节内隐刻板印象表达的自动化加工过程; 同时也通过辨识力成分, 参与调节内隐刻板印象表达的控制性加工过程。     

Quantifying the Value of Emotions Using a Willingness to Pay Approach

People generally seek out positive moods and avoid negative moods; however, it is unclear which motivation is more pronounced. Two studies addressed this issue by developing a value-based ranking of emotions based on the willingness to pay (WTP) approach. The approach utilizes money’s cardinal properties and assumes opportunity costs as with everyday purchases. In Study 1 British participants indicated they would be willing to pay more to experience positive than to avoid negative emotions. In Study 2 this positivity bias was replicated with another sample of British participants. However, Hong Kong Chinese participants did not show such a preference, and were willing to pay significantly less to experience positive emotions but more to avoid negative emotions when compared with British participants. Experiencing Love was given the highest WTP judgment in all samples. Thus, some emotions are universally valued, whereas preferences for others differ across cultural groups, perhaps shaped by norms. Implications concerning valuations of psychological states for policy purposes are discussed.