Changing food preference as a function of mood

The authors investigated the effect of mood on food selection. Participants (N = 98) indicated the likelihood of general eating and the likelihood of eating specific foods after reading and projecting themselves onto the events and emotions described in a sad and a happy vignette. Both men and women believed they were more likely to consume food following a happy versus a sad event, and men believed they were significantly more likely to eat than did women. However, the type of food men and women believed they would consume interacted with the type of event experienced. Vegetarian snack foods were more likely to be consumed following a happy versus a sad event, with men more likely to eat snack foods. Men did not significantly change in likelihood of consuming sweet foods as their mood changed. However, women believed they were more likely to consume sweet foods following a sad event. The authors discuss the results in terms of a self-medication hypothesis and the effect of carbohydrates on central serotonin and endogenous opioids. Overall, results demonstrated that mood influences belief in the likelihood of food selection.     

Variations in mood state as a function of a football season

Scores on the Profile of Mood States were collected from football players at a small university each week prior to a Saturday football contest. The scores were analyzed to assess whether mood varied as a function of the outcome of the previous week's game. Although the subjects' overall mood state was not influenced by the outcome of the games, scores on Tension, Vigor, Fatigue, and Confusion varied. Fatigue and Confusion were related to the outcomes of the games and gave partial support to the hypothesis that the players' mood would vary according to the outcome of the games played.     

Orienting responses as a function of age and task complexity.

Aged-related differences in the elicitation and habituation of orienting responses to the onset and offset of stimuli have been suggested by several authors. Electrodermal and cardiac orienting responses to the onset and offset of a visual stimulus were measured in three age groups (4 yr., 7 yr., and undergraduate). Each S made one of three judgments: non-signal (observe stimulus), content (color of stimulus), and duration (length of time stimulus presented). Few age differences were found in elicitation or habituation of orienting responses to stimulus onset or offset. There was a trend for elicitation of orienting responses to stimulus offset to be age-related, but the failure to find any other age-related changes made this difference somewhat questionable. Instructions as to the judgement to be made by S were the primary determinants of orienting responses to stimulus onset and offset across all age groups.     

Deceit as a function of sex of subject and target person

Thirty male and female undergraduates were run in same- and opposite-sex pairs to determine if the extent of experimentally sanctioned deceit would be influenced by sex pairings and potential for harm to another's self-esteem. Ss, who all believed they were playing the role of a teacher in a learning experiment, were instructed to provide false feedback (lie) at least three times during 30 trials to a learner, the other S. Consistent with hypotheses derived from a consideration of the potential harm to another's self-esteem and a suggested norm of white lying, perceived relative importance of male and female sex roles, and greater female concern for the social welfare of others, it was found that white lies occurred significantly more often than lies, that males were significantly more likely to give false feedback than females, that females were the target of false feedback significantly more often than males, and that the interaction between sex of S and sex of target person was also significant in that males lied to females more than any other sex pairing.This research was partially supported by the New Mexico Highlands University Institute of Scientific Research. A brief version of this report was presented at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association meeting, Denver, May, 1974.     

Towards a theory of mood function

In light of Laura Sizer's and Robert Thayer's models of mood, I propose a functional theory to explain in what sense moods are adaptive. I argue that mood involves a mechanism which monitors our physical and mental energy levels in relation to the perceived energy demands of our environment, and generates corresponding cognitive biases in our reasoning style, attention, memory, thought, and creativity. The function of this mechanism is to engage us in the right task with the right amount of energy by maintaining equilibrium between the energy we possess and the energy our environment demands.     

Variations in subject pool as a function of earlier or later participation

Data were obtained from 113 participants in a university subject pool during a 16-wk. semester. Without knowing the purpose of the study, participants self-selected to participate earlier (Weeks 3 and 4: n = 63) or later (Weeks 15 or 16) n = 50). Variations in scores on the NEO Personality Inventory--Revised, the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale, the General Expectancy of Success Scale, the Shipley Institute of Living Scale, self-reported SATs and GPAs, and a measure of academic self-efficacy as a function of earlier or later participation were examined. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that early participants differed significantly from later participants but not in predicted ways. Earlier participants scored higher on NEO PI-R Neuroticism; specifically men (n = 15) and women (n = 48) scored higher on Hostility, and women scored higher on Depression and Self-consciousness. An additional significant difference occurred for self-reported SAT Verbal scores for men, which were significantly higher for later participants. These temporal variations may represent confounds in research using university subject pools.     

Null effect of mood as a semantic prime.

Semantic tasks, such as lexical decision making and word recognition, have not produced a mood priming effect. Earlier studies have been criticized because they included (a) mood induction techniques that required instruction to feel the mood, and (b) the use of overlearned tasks that did not require controlled processing. In this pair of experiments, the authors attempted to address these criticisms. However, the results of this study did not demonstrate a mood priming effect for happy and sad subjects who appraised sentence content as being happy or sad. The results of this study supported the dissociation of semantic and episodic memory.     

Electromyograph responses and performance success estimates as a function of internal-external control.

For 12 externally scoring college women, marginally significant correlations of EMG recordings with self-estimates of success in tensing forearm muscles (-.50) and with success in relaxing these muscles (-.54) were obtained. Similar correlations for 12 internally scoring women were much smaller. Analysis of variance of means had indicated no differences in ability of these groups to control muscles of the forearm.     

Helping as a function of empathic responses and sociopathy

The present study reports two experiments which investigated helping as a function of empathic anxiety (anxiety in response to modeled distress) and individual differences in sociopathic tendencies. The first experiment concerned the effects of empathic anxiety, sociopathy, and perceived similarity/dissimilarity to a distressed person on helping. As predicted, subjects who experienced high levels of empathic anxiety helped more than subjects who experienced low levels of empathic anxiety. High sociopathic subjects experienced lower levels of empathic anxiety and helped less than did low sociopathic subjects. However, a path analysis disclosed that sociopathy's relationship to helping was not due to (or mediated by) empathic anxiety. The similarity manipulation did not influence empathic anxiety or helping. In the second experiment, subjects were classified as primary or secondary sociopaths (based on their levels of trait anxiety). As in the first experiment, empathic anxiety and sociopathy were significantly related to helping. Primary sociopaths displayed less empathic anxiety than secondary sociopaths, but the two groups did not differ in their willingness to help. Thus, in neither study could the sociopath's behavior be explained by empathic anxiety. The discussion concerned empathy as a mediational variable in helping and the role of personality variables in helping. A post hoc explanation of the sociopath's behavior, based on Schwartz' theory of the characteristics of helpers, was proposed.     

Generalization of teacher behavior as a function of subject matter specific discrimination training

The effect of training on the rate of behavior-specific praise for two fourth-grade teachers was investigated within a multiple-baseline design. Training teachers to identify instances of behavior-specific praise on videotaped presentations (discrimination training) combined with instructions to use praise, and audiotape recordings of the teachers' classroom interactions as feedback, increased the rates of behavior-specific praise. However, the effects were restricted to subject-matter areas in which training was conducted.