When what you say about others says something about you: Language abstraction and inferences about describers’ attitudes and goals

According to the linguistic category model ( [Semin and Fiedler, 1988] and [Semin and Fiedler, 1991]), a person’s behavior can be described at varying levels of abstraction from concrete (e.g., “Lisa slaps Ann”) to abstract (e.g., “Lisa is aggressive”). Research has shown that language abstraction conveys information about the person whose behavior is described (Wigboldus, Semin, & Spears, 2000). However to date, little research has examined the information that language abstraction may convey about describers themselves. In this paper, we report three experiments demonstrating that describers who use relatively abstract language to describe others’ behaviors are perceived to have biased attitudes and motives compared with those describers who use more concrete language.     

Emotional language processing: how mood affects integration processes during discourse comprehension

This research tests whether mood affects semantic processing during discourse comprehension by facilitating integration of information congruent with moods’ valence. Participants in happy, sad, or neutral moods listened to stories with positive or negative endings during EEG recording. N400 peak amplitudes showed mood congruence for happy and sad participants: endings incongruent with participants’ moods demonstrated larger peaks. Happy and neutral moods exhibited larger peaks for negative endings, thus showing a similarity between negativity bias (neutral mood) and mood congruence (happy mood). Mood congruence resulted in differential processing of negative information: happy mood showed larger amplitudes for negative endings than neutral mood, and sad mood showed smaller amplitudes. N400 peaks were also sensitive to whether ending valence was communicated directly or as a result of inference. This effect was moderately modulated by mood. In conclusion, the notion of context for discourse processing should include comprehenders’ affective states preceding language processing.     

In the mood to face the facts: When a positive mood promotes systematic processing of self-threatening information

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that a positive mood can increase attendance to, and systematic processing of, threatening health information, particularly when the information is self-relevant. In Study 1, a positive mood increased differentiation between strong and weak arguments in a threatening health message about RSI only for participants who had received false feedback regarding their high vulnerability to RSI. Mood had no effects under conditions of low vulnerability. In Study 2, a positive mood speeded up responses to self-threatening words—compared with neutral words—for smokers who had just read a threatening health message about smoking. The authors conclude that fostering a positive mood may promote attendance to and systematic processing of information that threatens the self, and hence contribute to the success of health campaigns targeted at individuals who are vulnerable to specific health risks.

Effects of induced and naturalistic mood on the temporal allocation of attention to emotional information

Building upon recent findings that affective states can influence the allocation of spatial attention, we investigate how state, trait and induced mood are related to the temporal allocation of attention to emotional information. In the present study, 125 unscreened undergraduates completed a modified rapid serial visual presentation task designed to assess the time course of attention to positive and negative information, comparing a neutral baseline mood induction to either a positive or negative mood induction. Induced negative mood facilitated attentional engagement to positive information while decreasing attentional engagement to negative information. Greater naturally occurring negative state mood was associated with faster or more efficient disengagement of attention from negative information in the presence of manipulated negative mood, relative to baseline. The engagement findings were inconsistent with our mood-congruence hypotheses and may be better explained by mood repair or affective counter-regulation theories. In contrast, the disengagement findings for state mood were somewhat consistent with our mood-congruence hypotheses. The relationship between mood and attention to emotional information may differ depending on the combination of attentional mechanism (engagement versus disengagement), aspect of mood (state, trait or induced), stimulus valence (positive versus negative) and timescale (early versus late) under investigation.     

I feel good,therefore I am real: Testing the causal influence of mood on state authenticity

Although the literature has focused on individual differences in authenticity, recent findings suggest that authenticity is sensitive to context; that is, it is also a state. We extended this perspective by examining whether incidental affect influences authenticity. In three experiments, participants felt more authentic when in a relatively positive than negative mood. The causal role of affect in authenticity was consistent across a diverse set of mood inductions, including explicit (Experiments 1 and 3) and implicit (Experiment 2) methods. The link between incidental affect and state authenticity was not moderated by ability to down-regulate negative affect (Experiments 1 and 3) nor was it explained by negative mood increasing private self-consciousness or decreasing access to the self system (Experiment 3). The results indicate that mood is used as information to assess one's sense of authenticity.     

Graphical language games: interactional constraints on representational form

The emergence of shared symbol systems is considered to be a pivotal moment in human evolution and human development. These changes are normally explained by reference to changes in people's internal cognitive processes. We present 2 experiments which provide evidence that changes in the external, collaborative processes that people use to communicate can also affect the structure and organization of symbol systems independently of cognitive change. We propose that mutual-modifiability-opportunities for people to edit or manipulate each other's contributions-is a key constraint on the emergence of complex symbol systems. We discuss the implications for models of language development and the origins of compositionality.     

Sad-and-social is not smart: The moderating effects of social anticipation on mood and information processing

We examined if anticipating working collectively, rather than individually, moderates the effects of mood on information processing through (a) distraction, (b) loafing, and/or (c) task engagement. When participants anticipated working collectively, rather than individually, those in sad moods became distracted by the social elements of the task, resulting in a reduced information focus. In contrast, those in happy moods became engaged in the collective task, increasing their intended effort, raising their information focus, and improving their performance on the task. Social loafing effects did not occur. Mediation analyses revealed that these effects were due to changes in information focus, not social focus or intended effort.     

How you ask matters: An experimental investigation of the influence of mood on memory self-perceptions and their relationship with objective memory

Stronger relationships often emerge between mood and memory self-efficacy (MSE) than between MSE and memory abilities. We examined how social desirability, mood congruency and framing influence the mood–MSE relationship. Social desirability correlated with all self-report measures, and covarying social desirability diminished the mood-MSE relationship while enhancing the relationship between MSE and objective memory. Participants rated their memory more harshly on positively than neutrally or negatively worded MSE items. Current mood state did not affect MSE overall or when items were worded positively or neutrally. However, on negatively worded items, participants in a negative mood exhibited lower MSE than participants in a positive mood. Thus, both MSE and the mood–MSE relationship depended upon question wording. These results indicate that controlling social desirability and item framing on MSE questionnaires may reduce their confounding influence on memory self-perceptions and the influence of mood on self-reported abilities, allowing subjective memory to more accurately reflect objective memory in healthy and clinical populations.     

How Sports Fans Forge Intergroup Competition Through Language: The Case of Verbal Irony

In situations with rival groups, people strategically use language to strengthen group identity and foster intergroup competition. We distinguished 2 communication mechanisms to accomplish this: (a) linguistic aggression toward out‐group members, (b) communicating group expectancies. We contrasted these mechanisms across 2 experiments by studying verbal irony. Experiment 1 targeted speaker behavior and showed that Dutch soccer fans found irony more appropriate to comment on out‐group (vs. in‐group) members, regardless of behavioral valence. Experiment 2 demonstrated differential inferences from irony by neutral observers: Fans using ironic comments about competent (vs. incompetent) behavior were seen more as out‐group and less as in‐group members. Our experiments demonstrated a communication asymmetry between speaker behavior and addressee inferences.     

Happy people thrive on adversity: Pre-existing mood moderates the effect of emotion inductions on creative thinking

Past research on the relationship between affect and creativity has yielded contradictory results. Most of the evidence has tended to show that brief positive emotions as well as more enduring positive moods enhance creativity. No study to date, however, has attempted to determine whether the influence of momentary emotions on creativity depends on pre-existing moods. In the present study, 96 undergraduates completed one of two creative tasks (generating or evaluating captions for photographs) on three occasions, after watching videos designed to induce positive, neutral, or negative emotions. Participants also completed a questionnaire assessing depressed mood. Results confirmed that the effect of emotion inductions on creativity depended on pre-existing mood. Participants low in depression wrote more creative captions and rated captions more accurately with induced negative emotion than with induced positive emotion. In contrast, participants high in depression appeared impervious to the effect of emotion inductions.     

Representing time in language and memory: The role of similarity structure

Every day we read about or watch events in the world and can easily understand or remember how long they last. What aspects of an event are retained in memory? And how do we extract temporal information from our memory representations? These issues are central to human cognition, as they underlie a fundamental aspect of our mental life, namely our representation of time. This paper reviews previous language studies and reports a visual learning study indicating that properties of the events encoded in memory shape the representation of their duration. The evidence indicates that for a given event, the extent to which its associated properties or sub-components differ from one another modulates our representation of its duration. These properties include the similarity between sub-events and the similarity between the situational contexts in which an event occurs. We suggest that the diversity of representations that we associate with events in memory plays an important role in remembering and estimating the duration of experienced or described events.     

The influence of induced mood on the inhibition of emotional information

The ability to inhibit affective information plays a major role in efficient cognitive processing. In this study the effect of mood induction on inhibitory processing of emotional material was investigated. In Experiment 1, performance on a negative affective priming task (NAP) following negative and positive mood induction (MIP) was compared to a neutral mood condition. Results revealed that, as compared with the neutral mood condition, inhibitory function for affective material was unaffected by negative MIP. However, after the positive MIP, inhibitory processes were significantly impaired. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended the findings on positive affect and inhibition. The data concerning positive mood fit with the general findings that positive mood often leads to a “loose, flexible” processing mode. The null-finding concerning negative mood and inhibition is discussed in the light of research on inhibition in depression.     

Effects of mood and knowledge on evaluations: An experimental study

An experimental study was conducted to estimate the impact of subjects' mood states on their responses to evaluative ratings. Four experimental groups were induced by either a very negative, mildly negative, neutral or positive mood-inducing film. As hypothesized, systematic differences were found between the groups in their evaluations. Factual knowledge about the evaluation object was, contrary to expected, not found to modify mood effects. This negative finding could, however, be explained by a strong stereotypical impression of the object (a distant travel destination) held by the respondents.     

The effect of mood on confidence in false memories

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of mood on suggestibility in the misinformation paradigm. To investigate the relative effects of valence and arousal, as well as affect-specific influences, six mood conditions were included: positive mood with low/high arousal (serene/happy), negative mood with low/high arousal (sad/angry), neutral mood, and a control condition. Participants watched a movie and were exposed to misleading information by means of a narrative. Memory was tested in a surprise forced-choice recognition task, with confidence judgements. The mood induction procedure was shown to be effective. A significant misinformation effect confirmed that participants were misled by the false information provided. Mood did not affect susceptibility to the misinformation effect, but did significantly influence participants’ belief in their false memories. Feeling sad induced the highest confidence ratings. Results are discussed in terms of different problem-solving strategies associated with discrete affective states, and have implications for both legal and clinical settings.     

On being happy but fearing failure: The effects of mood on self-handicapping strategies

Does temporary mood influence people’s tendency to engage in self-handicapping behaviors? Based on past research on self-handicapping and recent work on affect and social behaviors, this experiment predicted and found that positive mood significantly increased the tendency to engage in two kinds of self-handicapping strategies. Participants (N = 94) first received contingent or non-contingent positive feedback about performance on a task of ‘cognitive abilities’, and then underwent a positive, neutral, or negative mood induction using video films. Self-handicapping was assessed in terms of their subsequent preference for (a) drinking a performance-enhancing, or performance-inhibiting herbal tea, and (b) engaging or not engaging in performance-enhancing cognitive practice. As predicted, happy mood and non-contingent feedback significantly increased self-handicapping on both measures. The implications of these results for everyday performance tasks, and for recent affect-cognition theories, are discussed.     

"I won't do what you tell me!": elevated mood and the assessment of advice-taking in euthymic bipolar I disorder

We hypothesized that when individuals with bipolar disorder are engaged in goal-directed behaviour and experience elevated mood, their decision-making becomes less constrained by advice from other people. This process may allow their goal-directed behaviour to persist, contributing to manic symptoms. Three groups of 32 participants: euthymic-bipolar-I, remitted-unipolar and never-depressed healthy controls were allocated to either a high or low mood induction. Advice-taking was assessed before and after the induction by a computerized task incorporating facial images. The bipolar group significantly opposed the advice given in the task after the high mood induction. The effect was specific to bipolar disorder and remained when controlling for possible confounds. Future work could investigate the effects of this process on manic symptoms, its origins, and the wider theoretical and clinical implications.     

Impact of elicited mood on movement expressivity during a fitness task

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the impact of four mood conditions (control, positive, negative, aroused) on movement expressivity during a fitness task. Motion capture data from twenty individuals were recorded as they performed a predefined motion sequence. Moods were elicited using task-specific scenarii to keep a valid context. Movement qualities inspired by Effort-Shape framework (Laban & Ullmann, 1971) were computed (i.e., Impulsiveness, Energy, Directness, Jerkiness and Expansiveness). A reduced number of computed features from each movement quality was selected via Principal Component Analyses. Analyses of variance and Generalized Linear Mixed Models were used to identify movement characteristics discriminating the four mood conditions. The aroused mood condition was strongly associated with increased mean Energy compared to the three other conditions. The positive and negative mood conditions showed more subtle differences interpreted as a result of their moderate activation level. Positive mood was associated with more impulsive movements and negative mood was associated with more tense movements (i.e., reduced variability and increased Jerkiness). Findings evidence the key role of movement qualities in capturing motion signatures of moods and highlight the importance of task context in their interpretations.     

A context-free language for binary multinomial processing tree models

This paper provides a new formalization for the class of binary multinomial processing tree (BMPT) models, and theorems for the class are developed using the formalism. MPT models are a popular class of information processing models for categorical data in specific cognitive paradigms. They have a recursive structure that is productively described with the tools of formal language and computation theory. We provide an axiomatization that characterizes BMPT models as strings in a context-free language, and then we add model-theoretic axioms and definitions to interpret the strings as parameterized probabilistic models for categorical data. The language for BMPT models is related to the Full Binary Tree language, a well-studied context-free language. Once BMPT models are viewed from the perspective of the Full Binary Tree language, a number of theoretical and computational results can be developed. In particular, we have a number of results concerning the enumerations of BMPT models as well as the identifiability of subclasses of these models.     

An effect of mood on the perception of geographical slant

Previous research has shown that hills appear steeper to those who are fatigued, encumbered, of low physical fitness, elderly, or in declining health (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999; Proffitt, Bhalla, Gossweiler, & Midgett, 1995). The prevailing interpretation of this research is that observers’ perceptions of the environment are influenced by their capacity to navigate that environment. The current studies extend this programme by investigating more subtle embodied effects on perception of slant; namely those of mood. In two studies, with two different mood manipulations, and two estimates of slant in each, observers in a sad mood reported hills to be steeper. These results support the role of mood and motivational factors in influencing spatial perception, adding to the previous work showing that energetic potential can influence perception.     

The effects of mood and retrieval cues on semantic memory and metacognition

We investigated whether the previously established effect of mood on episodic memory generalizes to semantic memory and whether mood affects metacognitive judgments associated with the retrieval of semantic information. Sixty-eight participants were induced into a happy or sad mood by viewing and describing IAPS images. Following mood induction, participants saw a total of 200 general knowledge trivia items (50 open-ended and 50 multiple-choice after each of two mood inductions) and were asked to provide a metacognitive judgment about their knowledge for each item before providing a response. A sample trivia item is: Author – – To kill a mockingbird. Results indicate that mood affects the retrieval of semantic information, but only when the participant believes they possess the requested semantic information; furthermore, this effect depends upon the presence of retrieval cues. In addition, we found that mood does not affect the likelihood of different metacognitive judgments associated with the retrieval of semantic information, but that, in some cases, having retrieval cues increases accuracy of these metacognitive judgments. Our results suggest that semantic retrieval processes are minimally susceptible to the influence of affective state but does not preclude the possibility that affective state may influence encoding of semantic information.