Negative incidental affect and mood congruency in crossed categorization

Examined the effects of incidental sadness and anger on affiliative responses to crossed categorization targets. Affect manipulations included an anger-provoking frustration (Study 1), a sad film clip (Study 2), and autobiographical essays about sad or anger-provoking topics (Studies 3 and 4). By comparison with a neutral mood, anger (Study 1) reduced affiliative tendencies toward persons possessing an out-group membership but not toward those possessing only in-group memberships. Study 2 showed a similar pattern for sadness. Studies 3 and 4 replicated these effects in designs including both types of negative mood. Meta-analytic integration showed the pattern of greater rejection of targets with an out-group membership to be stronger under anger than sadness. Study 4 also showed that despite yielding a consistent pattern for affiliation, sadness and anger differentially elicited aggressive tendencies toward the same targets.