Mood

CHAPTER 3

Affective Influences on Cognition Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies JOSEPH P. FORGAS AND ERIC EICH

INTRODUCTION 61 HISTORY AND BACKGROUND MOOD CONGRUENCE 62 MOOD DEPENDENCE 68

MOOD EFFECTS ON PROCESSING STRATEGIES 72 CLOSING COMMENTS 78 REFERENCES 78

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INTRODUCTION

history and current status of research on mood congruence, mood dependence, and mood effects on processing strategies, with a view to clarifying what is known about each of these phenomena, and why they are worth knowing about.

The interplay between feeling and thinking has been a subject of scholarly discussion and spirited debate since antiquity. The last few decades have witnessed a mounting interest in the impact of affective or mood states on learning, memory, decision making, and allied cognitive processes. Much of this interest has initially focused on two phenomena: mood-congruent cognition —the observation that a given mood promotes the processing of information that possesses a similar affective tone or valence, and mood-dependent memory —the observation that information encoded in a particular mood is most retrievable in that mood, irrespective of the information’s affective valence. More recently, and especially since the publication of the previous edition of this Handbook , numerous studies have found that positive and negative moods can also influence memory due to their effects on information processing styles or strategies. This chapter examines the

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND From Plato to Pascal, a long line of Western philosophers has recognized the capacity of affect to color the way people remember the past, experience the present, and forecast the future. Psychologists, however, were relatively late to acknowledge this reality, despite a number of promising early leads (e.g., Rapaport, 1942/1961; Razran, 1940). Indeed, it is only within the past few decades that the interplay of affect and cognition received growing empirical attention (see LeDoux, 1996). One reason for the enduring neglect of research on affect may be the long-held belief that “passions” have a potentially dangerous, invasive influence on rational thinking. Fortunately, advances in cognitive psychology and neuroscience support the radically different view that affect is a useful and even essential component of adaptive social thinking (Adolphs & Damasio, 2001; Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Forgas, 2006). Psychology’s late start in exploring the affect/cognition interface also reflects the fact that neither behaviorism nor cognitivism—the two paradigms that dominated the

This chapter was prepared with the support of awards to the first author from the Australian Research Council and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and with the aid of grants to the second author from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The chapter also profited from the expert advice and assistance provided by Joseph Ciarrochi, Joanne Elliott, Dawn Macaulay, Stephanie Moylan, Patrick Vargas, and Joan Webb. 61

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Modulatory Processes

discipline throughout the 20th century—ascribed much importance to affect (for detailed discussion of affectrelated concepts, see Russell & Lemay, 2000). For some behaviorists, all unobservable mental events such as affect were, by definition, beyond the bounds of scientific psychology (Watson, 1929). The emerging cognitive paradigm initially also had little interest in affective phenomena (but see Antrobus, 1970). If considered at all, affect was seen as a disruptive influence on “proper”— read “emotionless” or “cold”—thought processes. In contrast, current research shows that affect plays an essential role in how information about the world is processed and represented. Affect underlies the cognitive representation of most social experiences (Forgas, 1979), and emotional responses can serve as an organizing principle in cognitive categorization (Niedenthal & Halberstadt, 2000).

The conditioning approach (see also Miller & Grace, this volume) was subsequently extended by Byrne and Clore (1970; Clore & Byrne, 1974) to explore affective influences on interpersonal attitudes. In these studies, aversive environments (as unconditioned stimuli) spontaneously produced negative affective reactions (as unconditioned responses), and a person encountered in this aversive environment (the conditioned stimulus) subsequently received more negative evaluations (a conditioned response) (e.g., Gouaux, 1971; Gouaux & Summers, 1973; Griffitt, 1970). Interestingly, Berkowitz and his colleagues (Berkowitz, Jaffee, Jo, & Troccoli, 2000) have suggested that these early associationist ideas retain a powerful influence on current theorizing, as we shall see below.

MOOD CONGRUENCE Early Theories and Research Linking Affect and Cognition Affect plays a central role in psychoanalytic theory. Freud suggested that affect has a dynamic, invasive quality that can infuse thinking and judgments unless adequately controlled. In a pioneering study, Feshbach and Singer (1957) induced fear in subjects through electric shocks and then instructed some of them to suppress their fear. Fearful subjects’ thoughts about another person showed greater mood congruence, and ironically (Wegner, 1994), this effect was even greater when subjects were trying to suppress their fear. Feshbach and Singer (1957) explained this in terms of psychodynamic projection and proposed that “suppression of fear facilitates the tendency to project fear onto another social object” (p. 286). Although radical behaviorism outlawed the study of subjective experiences, affect did receive some attention. Watson’s work with Little Albert was among the first to show affect congruence in conditioned responses (Watson, 1929; Watson & Rayner, 1920). Reactions toward a neutral stimulus, such as a furry rabbit, became more fearful after an association had been established between the rabbit and fear-arousing stimuli, such as a loud noise. Watson thought that most complex affective reactions acquired throughout life are established as a result of just such cumulative patterns of incidental associations. In another classic study, Razran (1940) showed that subjects evaluated sociopolitical messages more favorably when in a good than in a bad mood. Far ahead of their time, Razran’s studies, and those reported by other investigators (e.g., Bousfield, 1950), provided early empirical demonstrations of mood congruence.

The research reviewed in this section shows that affective states often produce powerful assimilative or congruent effects on the way people acquire, remember, and interpret information. However, we also show that these effects are not universal, but depend on a variety of situational and contextual variables that recruit different informationprocessing strategies. Accordingly, one of the main aims of modern research, and of this review, is to clarify why mood-congruent effects on cognition emerge under certain circumstances but not others. We begin by considering two recent theories of mood congruence, affect priming and affect-as-information. We then outline an integrative theory that is designed to explain the different ways in which affect can have an impact on cognition in general and on social cognition in particular. Finally, empirical evidence is examined, which reveals the essential role that different processing strategies play in the occurrence—or nonoccurrence—of mood congruence. Theories of Mood Congruence Two kinds of cognitive theories have been proposed to account for mood congruence: memory based theories (e.g., the affect priming model; see Bower & Forgas, 2000), and inferential theories (e.g., the affect-as-information model; see Clore, Gasper, & Garvin, 2001: Clore & Storbeck, 2006). The affect priming account, proposed by Bower (1981), argues that affect is integrally linked to an associative network of memory representations. An affective state may thus selectively and automatically prime associated representations previously linked to that affect, and these

Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies

concepts should be more likely to be used in subsequent constructive cognitive tasks. Early studies provided strong support for the concept of affective priming. For example, people induced to feel good or bad tend to selectively remember more mood-congruent details from their childhood, and recall more mood-congruent events they had recorded in diaries for the past few weeks (Bower, 1981). Mood congruence was also observed in subjects’ interpretations of social behaviors (Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984) and in their impressions of other people (Forgas & Bower, 1987). However, subsequent research showed that mood congruence is subject to several boundary conditions (see Blaney, 1986; Bower, 1987; Singer & Salovey, 1988). Mood-congruent effects were most reliable when (a) moods were intense (Bower & Mayer, 1985), (b) there was meaningful, causal connection between mood and the cognitive task (Bower, 1991), and (c) the tasks were self-referential (Blaney, 1986). It also seems that moodcongruent effects are most reliably obtained when tasks require a high degree of open and constructive processing, such as inferences, associations, impression formation, and interpersonal behaviors (e.g., Bower & Forgas, 2000; Mayer, Gaschke, Braverman, & Evans, 1992). Such constructive tasks provide people with a rich set of encoding and retrieval cues, and, thus, they allow affect to more readily function as a differentiating context (Bower, 1992; Fiedler, 1990). When tasks require little or no constructive processing, such as recognition tasks or the reflexive reproduction of preexisting attitudes, there is little opportunity for affectively primed information to influence the outcome. The consequence of affect priming is affect infusion —the tendency for judgments, memories, thoughts, and behaviors to become more mood congruent (Forgas, 1995, 2002, 2006). Later, we will describe an integrative theory that emphasizes the role of informationprocessing strategies in moderating mood congruence. Alternative, affect-as-information (AAI) models, advanced by Schwarz and Clore (1983, 1988; Clore & Storbeck, 2006), suggest that “rather than computing a judgment on the basis of recalled features of a target, individuals may . . . ask themselves: ‘how do I feel about it? [and] in doing so, they may mistake feelings due to a preexisting state as a reaction to the target” (Schwarz, 1990, p. 529). According to this view, mood is due to an inferential error, as people misattribute a preexisting affective state to a judgmental target. The predictions of the AAI model are often indistinguishable from earlier conditioning research by Clore and Byrne (1974). Whereas the conditioning account emphasized blind temporal and

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spatial contiguity as responsible for affect congruence, the AAI model, rather less parsimoniously, suggests a misdirected internal inferential process as producing the same effects (see Berkowitz et al., 2000). The AAI model also draws heavily on research on misattribution and judgmental heuristics (see Diederich & Busemeyer, this volume), suggesting that affective states function as heuristic cues in informing people’s judgments. It seems, however, that people rely on affect as a heuristic cue only when “the task is of little personal relevance, when little other information is available, when problems are too complex to be solved systematically, and when time or attentional resources are limited” (Fiedler, 2001, p. 175). Perhaps the earliest and still most compelling experiment supporting the AAI model involved telephoning respondents on pleasant (happy mood) or unpleasant (sad mood) days and asking them a variety of unexpected and unfamiliar questions (Schwarz & Clore, 1983). In this situation, subjects have little personal interest or involvement in responding to a stranger, and they have neither the motivation, time, nor cognitive resources to engage in extensive processing. Relying on prevailing affect as a heuristic cue to infer a response seems a reasonable strategy under such circumstances. In a conceptually similar study, Forgas and Moylan (1987) asked almost 1,000 people to complete an attitude survey on the sidewalk outside a cinema in which they had just watched either a happy or a sad film. Happy theatergoers gave much more positive responses than did their sad counterparts. As in the study by Schwarz and Clore (1983), respondents presumably had little time, interest, motivation, or capacity to engage in elaborate processing, and so relied on their affect as a heuristic shortcut to infer a reaction. The AAI model also has some serious shortcomings. The model mainly applies to mood congruence in evaluative judgments, but it has difficulty accounting for the infusion of affect into other cognitive processes, including attention, learning, and memory. Claims that the model is uniquely supported by findings that only unattributed affect produces mood congruence are dubious (Clore et al., 2001; Schwarz & Clore, 1988), because research shows that mood congruence, however caused, can be eliminated by instructing subjects to focus on their internal states (Berkowitz et al., 2000). Moreover, the informational value of affective states cannot be regarded as “given” and permanent, but, instead, it depends on the situational context (Martin, 2000). The AAI model also has nothing to say about the process of how cues other than affect (such as memories, features of the stimulus, etc.) are constructively combined to produce

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a response. In that sense, the AAI model is really a theory of nonjudgment or aborted judgment, rather than a theory of judgment. It now appears that, in most realistic cognitive tasks, affect priming rather than affect as information is the main mechanism producing mood congruence. Toward an Integrative Theory: The Affect Infusion Model As this brief review shows, a comprehensive explanation of mood congruence also needs to specify the circumstances that promote or prevent the effect, and should also define the conditions likely to trigger either affect priming or affect-as-information mechanisms. The affect infusion model or AIM (Forgas, 1995), following Fiedler (1991), suggests that mood congruence is most likely to occur when circumstances call for an open, constructive style of information processing, involving the active elaboration of the available stimulus details and requiring the use of memory-based information in this process. According to the AIM, (a) the extent and nature of affect infusion should be dependent on the kind of processing strategy that is used, and (b) all things being equal, people should use the least effortful and simplest processing strategy capable of producing a response. As this model has been described in detail elsewhere (Forgas, 1995, 2002), only a brief overview will be included here. The AIM identifies four processing strategies that vary according to both the degree of openness or constructiveness of the information-search strategy and the amount of effort exerted in seeking a solution. The first, direct-access strategy involves the retrieval of preexisting responses and is most likely when the task is highly familiar and when no strong situational or motivational cues call for more elaborate processing. As people possess a rich store of such preformed attitudes and judgments that require no constructive processing, affect infusion should not occur. The second, motivated-processing strategy involves highly selective and targeted thinking that is dominated by a particular motivational objective. This strategy also precludes open information search, and should be impervious to affect infusion (Clark & Isen, 1982). Indeed, motivated processing may also produce a reversal of moodcongruent effects (Berkowitz et al., 2000; Forgas, 1991; Forgas & Fiedler, 1996; Sedikides, 1994). The remaining two processing strategies require constructive and open-ended information-search strategies, and, thus, they facilitate affect infusion. Heuristic processing is likely when the task is simple, familiar, of little personal relevance, and cognitive capacity is limited and

there are no motivational or situational pressures for more detailed processing. This may be the case when people are asked to respond to unexpected questions in a telephone survey (Schwarz & Clore, 1983) or are asked to respond to a street survey (Forgas & Moylan, 1987). Heuristic processing can produce affect infusion when people rely on affect as a simple inferential cue, and employ the “how do I feel about it” heuristic to produce a response (Clore et al., 2001; Clore & Storbeck, 2006; Schwarz & Clore, 1988). When simpler strategies such as direct access, motivated, or heuristic processing prove inadequate, people need to engage in substantive processing to satisfy the demands of the task at hand. Substantive processing requires individuals to select and interpret novel information and combine this information with their preexisting, memory-based knowledge structures in order to compute and produce a response. Substantive processing is an inherently open and constructive strategy, and affect may selectively prime or enhance the accessibility of related thoughts, memories, and interpretations (Forgas, 1994, 1999a, 1999b). The AIM makes the interesting and counterintuitive prediction that affect infusion—and, hence, mood congruence—should be greater when more extensive and elaborate processing is required to deal with a more complex, demanding task. Several studies that we will soon review support this prediction. The AIM also identifies a range of contextual variables related to the task , the person, and the situation that jointly influence processing choices (Forgas, 2002; Rusting, 2001; Smith & Petty, 1995). The AIM also recognizes that affect itself can influence processing choices (Bless, 2000; Bless & Fiedler, 2006). These effects will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent section. The key prediction of the AIM is the absence of affect infusion when direct access or motivated processing is used, and the presence of affect infusion during heuristic and substantive processing. The implications of this model have now been supported in a number of the experiments considered below. Evidence for Mood Congruence This section reviews a number of empirical studies that illustrate mood congruence in learning, memory, perceptions, judgments, and inferences. Mood Congruence in Attention and Learning Affect may have a significant influence on what people will pay attention to and learn (Niedenthal & Setterlund,


1994). Due to the selective activation of an affect-related associative base, mood-congruent information may receive greater attention and be processed more extensively than affectively neutral or incongruent information (Bower, 1981). People spend longer reading mood-congruent material, linking it into a richer network of primed associations, and, as a result, they are better able to remember such information (see Bower & Forgas, 2000). These effects occur because “concepts, words, themes, and rules of inference that are associated with that emotion will become primed and highly available for use . . . [in] . . . top-down or expectation-driven processing . . . [acting] . . . as interpretive filters of reality” (Bower, 1983, p. 395). Consistent with this notion, depressed psychiatric patients tend to selectively pay greater attention to negative information (Koester, Raedt, Goeleven, Franck, & Crombez, 2005), show better learning and memory for depressive words (Watkins, Mathews, Williamson, & Fuller, 1992; Moritz & Glaescher, 2005), and show a selective moodcongruent bias in sensitivity to negative facial expressions, a bias that disappears once the depressive episode is over (Bradley & Mathews, 1983). There is some evidence that nondepressed adults also show a selective bias in gazing more at mood-congruent faces, but this effect tends to diminish in older adults (Isaacovitz, Toner, Goren, & Wilson, 2008). However, mood-congruent learning and attention is seldom seen in patients suffering from anxiety (Burke & Mathews, 1992; Watts & Dalgleish, 1991), perhaps because anxious people tend to use particularly vigilant and motivated processing strategies to defend against anxiety arousing information (Ciarrochi & Forgas, 1999; Mathews & MacLeod, 1994). Thus, as predicted by the AIM, different processing strategies appear to play a crucial role in mediating mood congruence in learning and attention. Mood Congruence in Memory Several experiments found that people are better at remembering their childhood, as well as more recent autobiographical memories, that match their prevailing mood (Bower, 1981; Miranda & Kihlstrom, 2005; see also Marsh & Roediger, this volume). Depressed patients display a similar pattern, preferentially remembering aversive childhood experiences, and, in general, demonstrating better memory for negative information (Direnfeld & Roberts, 2006), a memory bias that disappears once depression is brought under control (Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987). Consistent with the AIM, these mood-congruent memory effects also emerge when people try to recall complex social stimuli (Fiedler, 2001; Forgas, 1993). For example,

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depressed individuals have enhanced memory for negative rather than positive facial expressions (GilboaSchechtman, Erhard-Weiss, & Jeczemien, 2002). Research using implicit tests of memory, which do not require conscious recollection of past experience, also provides evidence of mood congruence. For example, depressed people tend to complete more word stems (e.g., can) with negative than with positive words they have studied earlier (e.g., cancer versus candy; Ruiz-Caballero, & Gonzalez, 1994). Similar results have been obtained in other studies involving experimentally induced states of happiness or sadness (Tobias, Kihlstrom, & Schacter, 1992). Mood-congruence is also an important cue when people encode music and film soundtracks (Boltz, 2004). Mood Congruence in Associations and Inferences Cognitive tasks often require us to “go beyond the information given,” using associations and inferences when dealing with complex and ambiguous social information (Heider, 1958). The greater availability of mood-consistent associations can have a marked influence on how complex or ambiguous details are interpreted (Bower & Forgas, 2000; Clark & Waddell, 1983). For example, when asked to freely associate to the cue life, happy subjects generate more positive than negative associations (e.g., love and freedom versus struggle and death), whereas sad subjects do the opposite (Bower, 1981). Mood-congruent associations also emerge when emotional subjects daydream or make up stories about fictional characters depicted in the Thematic Apperception Test (Bower, 1981). Such mood-congruent effects can have a marked impact on many social judgments, including perceptions of human faces (Gilboa-Schechtman et al., 2002; Schiffenbauer, 1974), impressions of people (Forgas & Bower, 1987), and self-perceptions (Sedikides, 1995). However, several studies have shown that this associative effect is diminished as the targets to be judged become more clearcut, and thus require less constructive processing (e.g., Forgas, 1994, 1995), again confirming that open, constructive processing is crucial for mood congruence to occur. Mood-primed associations are also important in clinical states: Anxious people tend to interpret spoken homophones such as pane/pain or dye/die in the more anxious, negative direction (Eysenck, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1987), consistent with the greater activation these moodcongruent concepts receive. Mood Congruence in Self-Judgments Affective states have a strong congruent influence on self-related judgments, and positive affect improves and

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negative affect impairs the valence of self-conceptions (Sedikides, 1995). In one study (Forgas, Bower, & Moylan, 1990), happy students were more likely to claim credit for success in a recent exam, and made more internal and stable attributions for their high test scores, but they were less willing to assume personal responsibility for failure. In contrast, those in a negative mood blamed themselves more for failure and took less credit for success (see Figure 3.1). These findings were also replicated in a study by Detweiler-Bedell and Detweiler-Bedell (2006), who conclude, consistent with the AIM, that “constructive processing accompanying most self-judgments is critical in producing mood-congruent perceptions of personal success” (p. 196). In another study supporting the AIM, Sedikides (1995) predicted and found that core or “central” conceptions of the self should be processed less constructively using the direct-access strategy. In contrast, less salient, “peripheral” self-conceptions that require more substantive processing showed stronger mood congruence. Affect also has a greater influence on self-judgments by subjects with low rather than high levels of self-esteem, presumably because the former have a less stable and less clearly defined self-concept (Brown & Mankowski, 1993). In a similar vein, Smith and Petty (1995) observed stronger mood congruence in the self-related memories reported by low rather than high self-esteem individuals. It appears that current mood also affects how people evaluate their present self against past selves, with sad people more likely to perceive congruence between their present and past negative selves (Gebauer, Broemer, Haddock, & Hecker, 2008). Consistent with the AIM, these studies suggest that low self-esteem people need to engage in more open and elaborate processing when thinking about themselves, increasing the tendency for their current mood to influence the outcome.

Attribution rating

7 Happy mood

6

Sad mood

5 4 3 2 1 0

High/Internal

High/Stable Low/Internal Exam score/Attribution type

Low/Stable

Figure 3.1 Attribution ratings made by subjects in a positive or negative mood for their performance in an earlier exam as a function of exam score (high vs. low) and attribution type (internal vs. stable). Source: Forgas, Bower, and Moylan, 1990.

Affect intensity may be another moderator of mood congruence, as mood congruence is greater among people who score high on measures assessing openness to feelings as a personality trait (Ciarrochi & Forgas, 2000). However, other work suggests that mood congruence in self-judgments can be spontaneously reversed as a result of motivated-processing strategies. Sedikides (1994) observed that after mood induction, people initially generated self-statements in a mood-congruent manner. However, with the passage of time, negative selfjudgments spontaneously reversed, suggesting the operation of an “automatic” process of mood management. Further research by Forgas and Ciarrochi (2002) replicated these results and indicated further that the spontaneous reversal of negative self-judgments is particularly pronounced in people with high self-esteem. Thus, moods have a strong congruent influence on selfrelated thoughts but only when open and constructive processing is employed, and judgments (a) relate to peripheral rather than central aspects of the self, (b) require extensive, time-consuming processing, and (c) reflect the selfconceptions of individuals with low rather than high self-esteem. Mood Congruence in Person Perception Paradoxically, several studies found that the more people need to think in order to compute a judgment, the greater the likelihood that affectively primed ideas will influence the outcome. In one series of studies (Forgas, 1992), happy and sad subjects were asked to read and form impressions about fictional characters who were described as being rather typical or ordinary or as having an unusual or even odd combination of attributes (e.g., an avid surfer whose favorite music is Italian opera). It was expected and found that complex, ambiguous characters indeed recruited more constructive processing and produced greater mood congruence than simple, typical characters. Subsequent research, comparing ordinary versus odd couples rather than individuals, yielded similar results (e.g., Forgas, 1993). In other work, the impact of mood on judgments and inferences about real-life interpersonal issues was investigated (Forgas, 1994). Partners in long-term, intimate relationships revealed clear evidence of mood congruence in their attributions for actual conflicts, especially complex and serious conflicts that demand more extensive and constructive processing. These experiments provide direct evidence for the process dependence of affect infusion into social judgments and inferences. Even judgments about


highly familiar people are more prone to affect infusion when a more substantive processing strategy is used. It also appears that personality characteristics, such as trait anxiety, can influence processing styles (Ciarrochi & Forgas, 1999). Low trait-anxious whites in the United States reacted more negatively to a threatening Black outgroup when experiencing negative affect, but high traitanxious individuals showed the opposite pattern: They went out of their way to control their negative tendencies when feeling bad, and they produced more positive judgments. It seems that low trait-anxious people processed information about the out-group in a more open manner, allowing affect to influence their judgments, whereas high trait-anxiety combined with aversive mood triggered a more controlled, motivated processing strategy designed to eliminate socially undesirable intergroup judgments. Mood Congruence in Social Behaviors To the extent that affect influences thinking and judgments, there could also be a corresponding mood-congruent influence on subsequent social behaviors that require some degree of substantive, generative processing (Heider, 1958). Positive affect should prime positive information and produce more confident, friendly, and cooperative “approach” behaviors, whereas negative affect should prime negative memories and produce “avoidant,” defensive, or unfriendly attitudes and behaviors. Mood Congruence in Responding to Requests A field experiment by Forgas (1998) investigated affective influences on responses to an impromptu request. Folders marked “please open and consider this” were left on empty library desks containing materials (pictures as well as text) designed to induce positive or negative mood. Students who (eventually) took these desks were surreptitiously observed to ensure that they did indeed open the folders and examine their contents carefully. Soon afterwards, they were approached by another student (in fact, a confederate) and received an unexpected polite or impolite request for several sheets of paper needed to complete an essay. Their responses were noted, and later they were asked to complete a brief questionnaire assessing their attitudes toward the request and the requester. Results revealed a clear mood-congruent pattern: Induced negative mood resulted in a more critical, negative evaluation of the request and the requester, as well as less compliance, than did positive mood. These effects were stronger when the request was impolite rather than polite, because impolite, unconventional requests required more elaborate

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and substantive processing, confirmed by better long-term recall for these messages. These results confirm that affect infusion can have a significant effect on determining attitudes and behavioral responses to people encountered in realistic everyday situations. Mood Congruence in Self-Disclosure Self-disclosure is one of the most important communicative tasks people undertake in everyday life, influencing the development and maintenance of intimate relationships. Self-disclosure is also critical to mental health and social adjustment. In a series of recent studies (Forgas, in press), subjects first watched a videotape that was intended to put them into either a happy or a sad mood. Next, they exchanged e-mails with a “partner” (in fact, a computer that had been preprogrammed to generate messages that conveyed consistently high or low levels of selfdisclosure). Happy persons disclosed more intimate information than did sad subjects, and did so most when the correspondent reciprocated with a high degree of disclosure, confirming that mood congruence is likely to occur in unscripted and unpredictable social encounters. Synopsis Evidence from many sources suggests that people tend to perceive themselves, and the world around them, in a manner that is congruent with their current mood. Over the past few decades, explanations of mood congruence have gradually evolved from earlier psychodynamic and conditioning approaches to more recent cognitive accounts, such as the affect priming model (Bower, 1981; Bower & Cohen, 1982) that was first formalized in his well-known network theory of emotion. With accumulating empirical evidence, however, it has also become clear that although mood congruence is a robust and reliable phenomenon, it is not universal. In fact, in many circumstances mood either has no effect or even has an incongruent effect on cognition. How are such divergent results to be understood? The affect-infusion model offers an answer supported by the empirical evidence suggesting that mood congruence is unlikely to occur whenever a cognitive task can be performed via a simple, well-rehearsed direct access strategy or a highly motivated strategy. In these conditions, there is little need or opportunity for cognition to be influenced or “infused” by affect. In contrast, heuristic processing may sometimes produce affect congruence in judgments, in circumstances when cognitive resources are limited and there are no situational or motivational pressures for more detailed analysis (Forgas, 2002, 2006).

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According to the AIM, it is most common for mood congruence to occur when individuals engage in substantive, constructive processing to integrate the available information with preexisting and affectively primed knowledge structures. The research reviewed here shows that mood-congruent effects are magnified when people engage in constructive processing to compute judgments about peripheral rather than central conceptions of the self, atypical rather than typical characters, and complex rather than simple personal conflicts. As we will see in the next section, the concept of affect infusion in general, and the idea of constructive processing in particular, may be keys to understanding not only mood congruence, but mood dependence as well.

MOOD DEPENDENCE The phenomenon of mood-dependent memory (MDM)— the observation that what has been learned in a certain state of affect or mood is best remembered in that state— has been an issue of recurring research interest for over 30 years. Much of this interest has reflected the belief, shared by many clinical researchers, that mood dependence is a causal factor in the memory deficits displayed by patients with alcoholic blackout, chronic depression, dissociative identity (formerly, multiple personality), traumatic amnesia, and other psychiatric disorders (Goodwin, 1974; Ludwig, 1984; Reus, Weingartner, & Post, 1979; Schacter & Kihlstrom, 1989). However, interest in mood dependence has also been driven by darker considerations and serious doubts about whether the phenomenon even exists. Though the first generation of MDM research, from 1975 to 1985, produced mostly positive results, few of the studies reported in the late 1980s succeeded in showing mood dependence (Bower & Mayer, 1989; Kihlstrom, 1989; Leight & Ellis, 1981). Consequently, researchers in the 1990s were left to question not only the clinical relevance of MDM, but also its status as a bona fide phenomenon of memory. Today the outlook is more optimistic, as later research indicated that MDM can be demonstrated in a robust and reliable manner, provided that several critical factors are taken into account. These factors are of two types: one concerned with characteristics of the subjects’ encoding and retrieval tasks; the other with attributes of the moods they experience while performing these tasks. The following sections review evidence bearing on both types of factors.

Task Factors Regarding task factors, one key consideration is the manner in which retrieval of the target events is tested. By several accounts (e.g., Bower, 1992; Eich, 1995a; Kenealy, 1997), MDM is more apt to arise when retrieval is mediated by “invisible” cues produced by the subject than by “observable” cues provided by the experimenter. Thus, free recall is a much more sensitive measure of mood dependence than are either cued recall or old/new recognition memory. A second critical task factor is, in effect, the complement of the first. Just as the odds of demonstrating MDM are improved by requiring participants to generate their own cues for retrieving the target events, so, too, are these prospects enhanced by requiring subjects to generate the events themselves. In support of this proposition, Eich and Metcalfe (1989) observed a significantly greater mooddependent effect in the free recall of verbal items that subjects had actively generated (e.g., guitar, elicited by the request: Name a musical instrument that begins with g) in contrast to items that the subjects had simply read (e.g., gold , embedded in the phrase Gold is a precious metal that begins with g). This result, which was replicated by Beck and McBee (1995), occurs regardless of whether the overall level of generate-item recall is higher than that of read items—the prototypic “generation effect” (Slamecka & Graf, 1978)—or whether it is lower (as happens when subjects read some target items three times but generate others only once). Moreover, and in line with remarks made in the preceding paragraph, the results of a test of old/new recognition memory, which was administered shortly after free recall, showed no sign of mood dependence for either type of target. Thus, it seems that the more one must rely on internal resources, rather than on external aids, to generate both the cues required to effect retrieval of the target events and the events themselves, the more likely is one’s memory for these events to be mood dependent. This reasoning provided the impetus for a series of studies by Eich, Macaulay, and Ryan (1994). During the encoding session of one study (viz. Experiment 2), university students were asked to recollect or generate as many as 16 specific episodes or events, from any time in the personal past, that were called to mind by ship, street, and other neutral-noun probes. After recounting the particulars of a given event, students rated its original emotionality, or how pleasant or unpleasant the event seemed when it occurred. Half the students completed this task of autobiographical event generation while they were feeling happy

Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies 50% Events recalled

(H) and half did so while sad (S)—affects that had been induced by having subjects ponder mood-appropriate ideas and images while mood-appropriate music played softly in the background. During the retrieval session, held 2 days after encoding, participants were asked to freely recall (i.e., recall in any order, without benefit of any observable reminders or cues) the gist of as many of their previously generated events as possible, preferably by recalling their precise corresponding probes. Students undertook this test of autobiographical event recall either in the same mood in which they had generated the events or in the alternative affective state, thus creating two conditions in which encoding and retrieval moods matched (H/H and S/S) and two in which they mismatched (H/S and S/H). Results of the encoding session are depicted in Figure 3.2. On average, participants generated more positive events, fewer negative events, and about the same, small number of neutral events (1.2 versus 2.0) when they were happy rather than sad. This pattern replicates prior work (e.g., Clark & Teasdale, 1982; Snyder & White, 1982), and it provides evidence of mood-congruent memory—the “enhanced encoding and/or retrieval of material the affective valence of which is congruent with ongoing mood” (Blaney 1986, p. 229). Results of the retrieval session, shown in Figure 3.3, provided evidence of mood-dependent memory. Relative to subjects whose encoding and retrieval moods matched (conditions H/H and S/S), those whose moods mismatched (H/S and S/H) recalled a smaller percentage of their previously generated positive events (means of 26% versus 37%), neutral events (17% versus 32%), and negative events (27% versus 37%). Collapsing across event types, total-event recall averaged 35% in the happy/happy

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Positive events Neutral events Negative events

40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

H/H

H/S S/H Encoding/Retrieval moods

S/S

Figure 3.3 Mean percentage of positive, neutral, and negative events recalled as a function of encoding and retrieval moods (H = happy, S = sad). Source: Eich, Macaulay, and Ryan, 1994, Experiment 2.

condition, 23% in the happy/sad condition, 27% in the sad/happy condition, and 34% in the sad/sad condition. This effect appears to be reliable: The same advantage was seen in two other studies in which happy and sad moods were induced through a combination of ideas, images, and music (Eich et al., 1994, Experiments 1 and 3) as well as in three separate studies in which the subjects’ affective states were altered by changing their physical surroundings (Eich, 1995b). Moreover, similar results were obtained in an investigation of bipolar patients who cycled rapidly and spontaneously between states of mania or hypomania and depression (Eich, Macaulay, & Lam, 1997). Thus, it seems that the combination of autobiographical event generation and recall constitutes a useful tool for exploring mood-dependent effects under both laboratory and clinical conditions, and that these effects emerge in conjunction with either experimentally induced or naturally occurring shifts in affective state. Mood Factors

12 Happy mood Events generated

10

Sad mood

8 6 4 2 0

Positive

Neutral

Negative

Event type

Figure 3.2 Mean number of positive, neutral, and negative events generated as a function of encoding mood (H = happy, S = sad). Source: Eich, Macaulay, and Ryan, 1994, Experiment 2.

Though certain combinations of memory materials and tasks work better than others in demonstrating MDM, none can conceivably work in the absence of an effective manipulation of mood. So, what makes a mood manipulation effective? One consideration is mood strength or intensity. By definition, MDM demands a statistically significant loss of memory when target events are encoded in one mood and retrieved in another. It seems doubtful whether anything less than a substantial shift in mood could produce such impairment. Indeed, a meta-analysis by Ucros (1989) indicated that the greater the difference in moods—depression versus elation, for example, as opposed to depression versus a neutral affect—the greater the mood-dependent effect. In a related vein, Bower (1992) has proposed that

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MDM reflects a failure of information acquired in one state to generalize to the other, and that generalization is more apt to fail the more dissimilar the two moods are. No less important than the strength of the moods is their stability over time and across tasks. In terms of demonstrating MDM, it does no good to engender a mood that evaporates as soon as the subject is given something to do, like memorize a list of words or generate a series of autobiographical events. It is possible that some studies failed to find mood dependence simply because they relied on moods that were potent initially but paled rapidly (Eich & Metcalfe, 1989). A third element of an effective mood is its authenticity or emotional realism. Using the autobiographical event generation and recall tasks described earlier, Eich and Macaulay (2000) saw no sign of MDM when undergraduates simulated feeling happy or sad, when, in fact, their mood had remained neutral throughout testing. Moreover, in several studies involving the intentional induction of specific moods, students have been asked to candidly assess (postexperimentally) how authentic or real these moods felt. Those who claim to have been most genuinely “moved” tend to show the strongest mood-dependent effects (Eich, 1995a). Thus, it appears that the prospects of demonstrating MDM are improved by instilling affective states that have three important properties: strength, stability, and sincerity. In principle, such states could be induced in a number of different ways; for instance, students might (a) read and internalize a series of self-referential statements (e.g., I’m feeling on top of the world versus Lately I’ve been really down), (b) obtain false feedback on an ostensibly unrelated task, (c) receive a posthypnotic suggestion to experience a specified mood, or, as noted earlier, (d) contemplate pleasant or unpleasant thoughts while listening to lively or languorous music (Martin, 1990). In practice, however, it may be that some methods are better suited than others for inducing strong, stable, and sincere moods. This possibility remains to be tracked down through close, comparative analysis of the virtues and liabilities of various mood-induction techniques (Eich, Ng, Macaulay, Percy, & Grebneva, 2007). Concluding Comments on Mood-Dependent Memory The preceding sections reviewed recent research aimed at identifying factors that play pivotal roles in the occurrence of mood dependence. What conclusions can be drawn from this line of work? The broadest and most basic conclusion is that the problem of unreliability that has long beset research on

MDM is not as serious or stubborn as most investigators once believed it to be. More to the point, it now appears that robust and reliable evidence of mood dependence can be realized under conditions in which subjects (a) experience strong, stable, and sincere moods, (b) take responsibility for generating the target events themselves, and (c) also assume responsibility for generating the cues required to retrieve these events. Taken together, these observations make a start toward demystifying MDM—but only a start. To date, only a few factors have been examined for their role in mood dependence; odds are that other factors of equal or greater significance exist, awaiting discovery. For instance, it is conceivable that mood-dependent effects become stronger, not weaker, as the interval separating encoding and retrieval grows longer (Eich, 1995a). Also, given that individual differences in personality have already been shown to play an important part in mood-congruent memory (Bower & Forgas, 2000; Smith & Petty, 1995), subject factors may figure prominently in mood-dependent memory as well. It is also possible that the state-dependent effects of drugs and environments may be mediated by their impact on mood: That is, how well information transfers from one pharmacological state to another (e.g., from alcohol intoxication to sobriety), or from one physical environment to another (e.g., a bright, sunny courtyard to a drab, windowless office), depends on the similarity between the affective states or moods that are experienced at information acquisition and retention testing (Eich, 2007, 2008). And although the literature is replete with clinical conjectures about the role of MDM in various forms of memory pathology, it is lacking in hard clinical data. To date, few studies have sought to demonstrate mood dependence in individuals who experience significant, sometimes extreme, alterations in mood as a consequence of a psychiatric condition, such as unipolar mania (Weingartner, Miller, & Murphy, 1977), bipolar illness (Eich, Macaulay, & Lam, 1997), or dissociative identity disorder (Nissen, Ross, Willingham, MacKenzie, & Schacter, 1988). As we have seen, recent research involving induced moods in normal subjects has helped establish the reliability of MDM. By exploring MDM within the context of the marked mood swings shown by select clinical samples, it may be possible to establish the phenomenon’s generality. A different way of achieving this aim relates to the finding, alluded to earlier, that free recall is a more sensitive measure of mood dependence than are either cued recall or recognition memory. This is why free recall has been the test of choice in most studies of MDM undertaken in


the past 20 years (e.g., Eich & Metcalfe, 1989; Schramke & Bauer, 1997). Though free recall, cued recall, and recognition memory seem to differ in their sensitivity to mood-dependent effects, all represent explicit as opposed to implicit measures of retention. As defined by Roediger (1990, p. 1043), explicit measures “reflect conscious recollection of the past,” whereas implicit tests “measure transfer (or priming) from past experience on tasks that do not require conscious recollection for their performance.” Given that prior MDM research has relied almost exclusively on explicit measures (for exceptions see Macaulay, Ryan, & Eich, 1993; Tobias, Kihlstrom, & Schacter, 1992), the question arises: Is it possible to demonstrate mood dependence using implicit tests of memory? Novelty aside, the question is interesting inasmuch as it appears to admit two totally different answers. On the one hand, there are two good reasons for thinking that implicit measures should not show MDM. First, in cases of functional amnesia, it is common to find abnormally poor performance in explicit tests, such as recall or recognition, coupled with normal levels of priming in implicit tests, such as word-fragment completion or perceptual identification (Schacter & Kihlstrom, 1989). As an example, most individuals diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) manifest interpersonality amnesia, in that events encoded by a particular personality state or identity are retrievable by that same identity but not by a different one. From one DID patient to the next, these identities can vary tremendously in number, complexity, periodicity, and other fundamental features including age, gender, handedness, emotional complexion, allergic reactions, and pain tolerance. In general, however, they can be viewed as “highly discrete states of consciousness organized around a prevailing affect, sense of self (including body image), with a limited repertoire of behaviors and a set of state-dependent memories” (Putnam, 1989, p. 103). It is for this reason that interpersonality amnesia has been interpreted as an extreme example of mood dependence (Bower, 1994; Nissen et al., 1988). Given this interpretation, it is significant—vis-à-vis the prospects of demonstrating implicit mood dependence—that performance on at least some implicit tests is spared in cases of DID, even when the interpersonality amnesia profoundly impairs performance under explicit test conditions (Eich, Macaulay, Loewenstein, & Dihle, 1997; Nissen et al., 1988). The second reason for doubting the possibility of implicit MDM relates to the point, made earlier, that MDM is more apt to occur when explicit recollection is tested in the absence than in the presence of overt

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reminders (such as the stimulus cues provided in a test of paired-associates recall, or the copy cues presented in a test of recognition memory). This point is pertinent to the present discussion because, even though implicit measures, by definition, do not demand conscious recollection of past events, they do require that subjects respond to overt cues in the form of specific, tangible test stimuli. Thus, for example, implicit memory for a previously studied item such as apple might be assessed by asking subjects to (a) name the first word they think of that begins with app, (b) unscramble the anagram eplap to form a meaningful word, or (c) identify what they saw on a screen following the fleeting appearance of apple. Given their overtly cued nature, implicit tests such as stem completion, anagram solution, or perceptual identification would seem ill-suited to showing MDM. On the other hand, there are two good reasons for thinking that implicit tests should show mood dependence. First, prior research has revealed that changes in contextual information—such as presentation modality, type font, and orientation, and even environmental setting— from study to test attenuates priming on a variety of implicit tasks (Roediger & McDermott, 1993). If mood is construed as a kind of internal contextual cue, then priming in at least some implicit tests may be susceptible to shifts in mood state. The second source of support for the idea of implicit MDM stems from the work of Tobias and her associates (Tobias, 1992; Tobias et al., 1992), who suggest that mooddependent effects emerge when the cues afforded by the retention test are “impoverished” (as in free recall), but not when they are “rich” (as in cued recall or recognition memory). On this view, implicit tests entail the most impoverished cues of all—indeed, they do not even specify that the subject should try to retrieve a specific memory (Kihlstrom, Eich, Sandbrand, & Tobias, 2000)—which implies that implicit tests should be especially sensitive to mood-dependent effects. Tobias (1992) investigated this implication in her doctoral dissertation, the results of which are reviewed in Tobias et al. (1992). Her first study, comparing explicit stem-cued recall to implicit word-stem completion, revealed no evidence of MDM on either measure. However, her second study evinced a small but significant mood-dependent effect in a novel, ostensibly implicit test of free association, but—curiously—no effect at all in an explicit test of free recall. Twenty years on, the reliability and generality of Tobias’ results remain to be determined, but they seem to support the notion that mood dependence may affect performance even on tasks that do not demand

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deliberate, conscious recollection of the past. This matter continues to merit more attention, as does the related idea that, by impairing intentional but not automatic uses of memory, shifts in affective state may reduce recollection without appreciably affecting familiarity (Jacoby, 1998; Kelley & Jacoby, 2000). Yet another promising avenue for research concerns the concept of affect infusion, the process by which affect influences and then becomes a part of one’s judgment about an event. In his eponymous model, Forgas (1995, pp. 39–40) argued that affect infusion is most likely to occur in the course of constructive processing that involves the substantial transformation rather than the mere reproduction of existing cognitive representations; such processing requires a relatively open information search strategy and a significant degree of generative elaboration of the available stimulus details. This definition seems broadly consistent with the weight of recent evidence suggesting that affect “will influence cognitive processes to the extent that the cognitive task involves the active generation of new information as opposed to the passive conservation of information given” (Fiedler, 1990, pp. 2–3). Though the AIM is chiefly concerned with moodcongruent effects in impression formation, person perception, and allied aspects of social cognition (see Forgas, 1995), it is relevant to mood-dependent memory as well. Compared to the rote memorization of unrelated words, the task of recollecting and recounting real-life events would seem to place a greater premium on active, substantive processing, and thereby promote a higher degree of affect infusion. Thus, the AIM agrees with the fact that list-learning experiments often fail to find mood dependence, whereas studies involving autobiographical memory usually succeed. Moreover, the AIM accommodates an important qualification, alluded to earlier, that mood dependence is more apt to occur when retention is tested in the absence than in the presence of specific, observable reminders or cues. Thus, according to the AIM, free recall is a more sensitive measure of MDM than is recognition memory because the latter entails “direct access thinking”—Forgas’s (1995) term for cognitive processing that is simpler, more automatic, and less affectively infused than that required for free recall. In short, and in general, it may be that the higher the level of affect infusion achieved both at encoding and at retrieval, the better the odds of demonstrating mood dependence. This idea fits well with what is now known about mood dependence and, more important, it has testable implications. Suppose, for instance, that happy and sad subjects read about and form impressions of fictional

characters, some of whom appear quite ordinary and some of whom seem rather odd. The AIM predicts that atypical, unusual, or complex targets should selectively recruit longer and more substantive processing strategies, and correspondingly greater affect infusion effects. Accordingly, odd characters should be evaluated more positively by happy than by sad subjects, whereas ordinary characters should be perceived similarly—a deduction that has been verified in several studies (Bower & Forgas, 2000; Forgas, 2002). Now suppose that the subjects are later asked to freely recall as much as they can about the target individuals, and that testing takes place either in the same mood that had been experienced earlier or in the alternative affect. The prediction is that, relative to their mismatched mood peers, subjects tested under matched mood conditions will recall more details about the odd people but an equivalent amount about the ordinary individuals. More generally, it is conceivable that mood dependence, like mood congruence, is enhanced by the encoding and retrieval of atypical, unusual, or complex targets, for the reasons given by the AIM. Similarly, it may be that judgments about the self, in contrast to others, are more conducive to demonstrating MDM, as people tend to process self-relevant information in a more extensive and elaborate manner (see Forgas, 1995; Sedikides, 1995). Possibilities such as these are inviting issues for future research on mood dependence.

MOOD EFFECTS ON PROCESSING STRATEGIES In the previous two sections, we surveyed the available empirical evidence showing that mood states can influence the content and valence of memory and cognition, through mechanisms such as mood congruence and mood dependence. In addition to influencing content, that is, what people think, moods may also influence the process of cognition, that is, how people think, with important consequences for attention, memory, judgments, and inferences. We shall now turn to reviewing recent evidence demonstrating the information processing consequences of affective states. Theoretical Explanations There has been some evidence for affectively induced differences in information processing styles since the early 1980s, and in recent years this line of research has expanded strongly (Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Clark & Isen, 1982). Early studies suggested a rather simple pattern: It


appeared that people experiencing a positive affect seemed to employ more casual, less effortful, and more superficial information processing strategies. Happy persons were also found to reach decisions more quickly; use less information; avoid demanding, systematic thinking; and curiously, appeared more confident about their decisions. In contrast, negative affect apparently triggered a more effortful, systematic, analytic, and vigilant processing style (Clark & Isen, 1982; Isen, 1984; 1987; Schwarz, 1990). Subsequent studies, however, also showed that positive affect can also produce distinct processing advantages when performing certain tasks. For example, happy people were found to be more likely to adopt more creative, open, and inclusive thinking styles, used broader categories, showed greater mental flexibility, and were able to perform more effectively on secondary tasks (Bless, 2000; Fiedler, 2001; Hertel & Fiedler, 1994; Isen & Daubman, 1984). What is the reason for these mood-induced differences in processing styles? One early explanation emphasized the motivational consequences of positive and negative affect. According to this view (Clark & Isen, 1982; Isen, 1984, 1987), people experiencing positive mood may subconsciously try to maintain this pleasant state by refraining from any effortful activity—such as elaborate information processing— that might interfere with their mood. In contrast, negative affect should automatically motivate people to engage in vigilant, effortful processing as an adaptive response to improve an aversive state. In contrast with this affect maintenance/affect repair hypothesis, others such as Schwarz (1990) offered a slightly different cognitive tuning account. Schwarz (1990) argued that positive and negative affect have a fundamental signaling/tuning function, and their role is to automatically inform the person whether a relaxed, effort minimizing (in positive affect) or a vigilant, effortful (negative affect) processing style is appropriate in a given situation. These ideas are, of course, rather similar to functionalist/evolutionary ideas about the adaptive functions of affect (Forgas, Haselton, & von Hippel, 2007). Another theoretical approach focused on the influence of affective states on information processing capacity, arguing that mood states may impact processing because affect takes up scarce processing capacity. Ellis and his colleagues suggested that depressed mood and negative affect influence attentional resources, and reduce the processing capacity available to perform cognitive tasks (Ellis & Ashbrook, 1988; Ellis & Moore, 1999). In contrast, Isen (1984) proposed that it is positive rather than negative affect that reduces information processing capacity. These

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authors found that the superficial processing produced by happy mood is easily reversed if extra processing resources, such as time, become available. However, as positive and negative affect promote qualitatively different thinking styles, it is unlikely that the similar capacity limit explanations put forward by Ellis and Ashbrook (1988) and Isen (1984) could both be correct. It remains unclear what, if any, role cognitive capacity plays in mediating affective influences on information processing. One shared problem with these explanations is that they all assume that positive and negative affect increases or decreases the effort, vigilance, and elaborateness of information processing. More recently, theorists such as Bless (2000; Bless & Fiedler, 2006) put forward a rather different view. According to them, the fundamental evolutionary significance of positive and negative affective states is not simply to influence processing effort, but rather, to trigger equally effortful, but fundamentally different information processing styles. Bless and Fiedler (2006) distinguish between “ . . . two complementary adaptive functions: assimilation and accommodation (cf. Piaget, 1954). Assimilation means to impose internalized structures onto the external world, whereas accommodation means to modify internal structures in accordance with external constraints . . . with respect to affective influences . . . it will turn out that . . . the role of positive mood is to facilitate assimilation whereas the role of negative mood is to strengthen accommodation functions” (p. 66). According to this model, positive affect generally promotes a more assimilative, schema-based, top-down processing style, where preexisting ideas, attitudes, and representations dominate information processing. In contrast, negative affect produces a more accommodative, bottom-up, and externally focused processing strategy where attention to situational information drives thinking (Bless, 2000; Bless & Fiedler, 2006). Key support for this model is provided by experiments that show that positive affect does not necessarily impair processing effort. For example, Bless (2000) found that performance on simultaneously presented secondary tasks is not impaired by positive affect, as should be the case if participants were effort minimizing. In other words, positive and negative affect promote qualitatively different, assimilative versus accommodative processing styles, without also impacting on processing effort. Several lines of evidence can be readily interpreted in terms of this assimilative/accommodative processing dichotomy. For example, positive affect can promote the use of broader and more integrative cognitive categories (Isen, 1984), and happy participants sort stimuli into fewer


and more inclusive groupings than do participants in a neutral-mood condition (Isen & Daubman, 1984). Along the same lines, Bless, Hamilton, and Mackie (1992) asked happy, neutral, or sad participants to classify 28 behavioral descriptions, and found that happy persons produced higher-level categories. The notion that positive affect results in more abstract levels of representations is also reflected in language choices, as happy participants prefer more abstract descriptions than do sad participants (Beukeboom, 2003), and are more likely to retrieve a global rather than a specific representation of persuasive messages (Bless, Mackie, & Schwarz, 1992). Corresponding processing effects associated with mood were also found with nonverbal tasks. When participants were asked to focus on geometrical figures, happy persons focused more on global features and sad people focused more on local features (Gasper & Clore, 2002; see also Sinclair, 1988). Why exactly should positive affect promote assimilative thinking, and negative affect accommodative processing? Bless and Fiedler (2006) argue that the processing effects of mood are consistent with evolutionary theories that emphasize the adaptive, functional consequences of affective states in preparing the organism to respond to different environmental challenges. Positive affect in essence functions as a signal, informing us that the situation is safe, familiar, and existing knowledge can be relied on. Negative affect, in contrast, operates like a mild alarm signal, indicating that the situation is new and unfamiliar and demands greater attention to new, external information. Bless and Fiedler’s (2006) theory also has some interesting and counterintuitive implications, predicting that both positive and negative affect can produce distinct processing advantages albeit in different situations. For a culture in which the desirability of positive affect is taken for granted, and negative affect is frequently construed as not only undesirable but often requiring psychological intervention, this is an important message, a point we will return to later. First, however, we shall look at some of the empirical evidence supporting this model. Evidence for the Processing Consequences of Affect The principles of affective influences on information processing may best be illustrated by an everyday example. Imagine that it is a cold, rainy day as you enter the local news agency to buy a paper. As you pay, you briefly notice a few strange objects on the checkout counter—a matchbox car, some plastic toy animals, and a few other trinkets. After you leave the store, a young woman asks you to try to remember what you saw in the shop.

This is just the sort of study we completed recently (Forgas, Goldenberg, & Unkelbach, 2009). The question we were interested in was this: Are people better at remembering everyday details when they are in a bad mood (because of the inclement weather), or do they remember more of the trinkets on a bright, sunny day, when they are in a good mood? Surprisingly, it turned out that people in a negative mood actually had better eyewitness memory for what they saw in the shop than did happy people questioned on a bright, sunny day (see Figure 3.4). This experiment, and others like it, suggest that mental processes can be significantly and reliably influenced by a person’s mood state. In particular, and somewhat counterintuitively, several of the following experiments demonstrate the beneficial, adaptive consequences of negative affect in such areas as judgmental errors, eyewitness accuracy, stereotyping, interpersonal communication, and detection of deception, to mention just a few. Affective Influences on Eyewitness Memory As we have seen, there is evidence suggesting that positive affect increases, and negative affect decreases, the tendency to rely on internal rather than external knowledge in cognitive tasks, resulting in a selective memory bias for self-generated information (Bless, Bohner, Schwarz, & Strack, 1990; Fiedler, Nickel, Asbeck, & Pagel, 2003). If happy individuals are more likely to rely on top-down heuristics, whereas sad participants pay more detailed attention to external information (Isen, Means, Patrick, & Nowicki, 1982), then negative mood should improve, and positive mood impair, eyewitness accuracy. In a series of experiments, we predicted that positive affect should promote, and negative affect should inhibit, 2.5 2.0 Items recalled

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Correct Incorrect

1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0

Happy

Sad Mood

Figure 3.4 Mean number of target items recalled as a function of the mood (happy vs. sad) induced by the weather. Source: Forgas, Goldenberg, and Unkelbach, 2009.


the well-demonstrated tendency by eyewitnesses to incorporate false details into their memories (Forgas, Vargas, & Laham, 2005). In one study, participants viewed pictures showing a car crash scene (negative event) and a wedding party scene (positive event). One hour later, they received a mood induction (recalled happy or sad events from their past) and received questions about the scenes that either contained, or did not contain misleading information. After a further 45-minute interval the accuracy of their eyewitness memory for the scenes was tested. As expected, positive mood increased, and negative mood decreased the tendency to incorporate misleading information into their eyewitness memories. In fact, negative mood almost completely eliminated the common “misinformation effect,” as also confirmed by a signal detection analysis. This pattern was confirmed in a second, more realistic experiment, where students witnessed a staged 5-minute aggressive encounter between a lecturer and a female intruder (Forgas et al., 2005, Exp. 2). A week later, while in a happy or sad mood, they received a questionnaire that contained either planted, misleading information or control, non-misleading information. After a further interval, eyewitness memory was assessed. Those in a happy mood when exposed to misleading information were more likely subsequently to report false details as true (see Figure 3.5). In contrast, negative affect eliminated this common source of error in eyewitness memory, as sadness improved the ability to discriminate between correct and misleading details. Can people control such subtle and subconscious mood effects? In a further study, participants saw videotapes showing (a) a robbery, and (b) a wedding scene. After 3.0 Misleading information Control information

False alarms

2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0

Happy

Neutral Mood

Sad

Figure 3.5 Mean errors of recognition memory (false alarms) as a function of the mood experienced during exposure to misleading (planted) or non-misleading (control) information. Source: Forgas, Vargas, and Laham, 2005, Experiment 2.

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a 45-minute interval they received an audiovisual mood induction and then completed a short questionnaire that either did or did not contain misleading information about the event. Some were also instructed to “disregard and control their affective states.” Exposure to misleading information reduced eyewitness accuracy most when people were in a happy rather than a sad mood. However, direct instructions to control affect proved ineffective to reduce this mood effect. Conceptually similar results were also reported by Storbeck and Clore (2005), who also found that “individuals in a negative mood were significantly less likely to show false memory effects than those in positive moods” (p. 785), who explain their findings in terms of an affect-as-information mechanism. These experiments offer convergent evidence that negative moods, by recruiting more accommodative thinking, can significantly improve cognitive performance, in this case, by reducing susceptibility to misleading information. Paradoxically, happy mood actually reduced accuracy yet increased confidence, suggesting that people were unaware of the influence of their mood states. Affective Influences on Judgmental Errors Many common judgmental errors in everyday life occur because people are imperfect and often inattentive information processors. Can mood states, through their influence on processing styles, increase or reduce judgmental errors? The fundamental attribution error (FAE) or correspondence bias refers to a pervasive tendency by people to infer intentionality and internal causation and underestimate the impact of situational forces in their social judgments (Gilbert, 1991). This error occurs because people pay disproportionate attention to salient information such as the actor and neglect information about situational constraints (Gilbert, 1991). If negative mood facilitates accommodative processing, it should reduce the incidence of the FAE by directing greater attention to situational information (Forgas, 1998). To test this prediction, in one experiment, happy or sad participants were asked to read and make attributions about the writer of an essay advocating a popular or unpopular position (for or against nuclear testing), positions which were described as either assigned, or freely chosen by the writer. Results showed that happy persons were more likely, and sad people were less likely than controls to commit the FAE and incorrectly infer attitude differences based on coerced essays. Similar effects can also occur in real life. In a field study, participants feeling good or bad after seeing happy or sad movies read and made attributions about the writers of popular and unpopular essays


arguing for or against recycling. Again, positive affect increased and negative affect decreased the tendency to mistakenly attribute responsibility for coerced essays. In a further study, recall of the essays was also assessed as an index of processing style (Forgas, 1998, Exp. 3). Negative affect again reduced the incidence of the FAE, and recall-memory data showed that those in a negative mood remembered significantly more details than did others, confirming that they processed the stimulus information more thoroughly. A mediational analysis also found that processing style was a significant mediator of mood effects on judgmental errors. However, it seems that negative affect may only improve accuracy when detailed stimulus information is available. Ambady and Gray (2002) found that in the absence of detailed information, “sadness impairs accuracy /precisely/ by promoting a more deliberative information processing style” (p. 947). Affective Influences on Skepticism and the Detection of Deception We mostly rely on second-hand, untested information in forming our views about the world and other people. How do we decide if the information we come across in everyday life is true or false? Accepting invalid information as true (gullibility) can be just as dangerous as rejecting information that is valid (excessive skepticism). Several recent experiments found that moods have a significant influence on accepting or rejecting information. Some claims (such as “urban myths”) can potentially be evaluated against objective evidence (e.g., power lines cause leukemia; the Israelis are responsible for 9/11), whereas other messages, such as most interpersonal communications, are, by their very nature, ambiguous and not open to objective validation. By recruiting assimilative or accommodative processing, mood states may significantly influence skepticism and gullibility (Forgas & East, 2008a, 2008b). In one study, we asked happy or sad participants to judge the probable truth of a number of urban legends and rumors. Negative mood promoted skepticism, and positive mood promoted greater gullibility but only for new and unfamiliar claims, consistent with the hypothesis that negative affect triggers a more externally focused and accommodative thinking style. In another experiment, we tested participants’ memory two weeks after initial exposure for true and false statements taken from a trivia game. Only sad participants were able to correctly distinguish between true and false claims they had seen previously, whereas happy participants were more likely to rate all previously seen

statements as true. This pattern suggests that happy mood enhanced the tendency to rely on the “what is familiar is true” heuristic, but negative mood conferred a memory advantage by promoting a more accommodative processing style (Fiedler & Bless, 2000). Moreover, mood may influence people’s tendency to accept or reject interpersonal communications as genuine or false. When happy and sad participants were asked to judge the genuineness of positive, neutral, and negative facial expressions by others, those in a negative mood were significantly less likely to accept these displays as genuine (Forgas & East, 2008a). Mood, through its effect on processing styles, may also influence people’s ability to detect deception. We asked happy or sad participants to accept or reject the videotaped statements of people who were interrogated after a staged theft, and were either guilty, or not guilty (Forgas & East, 2008b). Those in a positive mood were more likely to accept denials as truthful. Sad participants made significantly more guilty judgments, and they were significantly better at correctly detecting deceptive (guilty) targets (see Figure 3.6). In other words, negative affect produced a significant advantage in accurately distinguishing truths from lies. These experiments confirm that negative affect increases skepticism both about factual, and about interpersonal messages, and also significantly improves people’s ability to detect deception, consistent with negative affect recruiting a more situationally oriented, accommodative cognitive style. Affective Influences on Reliance on Stereotypes Stereotypes are by definition preexisting knowledge structures that may guide impressions and behavior. When 90% Truthful Deceptive

80% 70% Guilty judgments

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60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Happy

Neutral

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Mood

Figure 3.6 Mean judgments of the guilt of targets accused of theft as a function of the target’s veracity (truthful vs. deceptive) and the participant’s mood. Source: Forgas and East, 2008b.


relying on a heuristic, assimilative strategy, the perceiver’s general knowledge and stereotypes should become more influential. Alternatively, when externally focused, accommodative processing is used, the importance of preexisting stereotypes should diminish. In several studies, Bodenhausen (1993; Bodenhausen, Kramer, & Süsser, 1994) found that happy participants relied more on ethnic stereotypes when evaluating a student accused of misconduct, whereas negative mood reduced this tendency. Sad individuals in general also tend to pay greater attention to specific, individuating information when forming impressions (Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Edwards & Weary, 1993). We further tested this prediction in one experiment by asking happy or sad people to generate rapid responses to targets that did or did not appear to be Muslims, using the “shooter’s bias” paradigm to assess subliminal aggressive tendencies (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002). In this task, individuals have to shoot at rapidly presented targets only when they carry a gun. Results showed that U.S. participants display a strong implicit bias to shoot more at Black rather than White targets (Correll et al., 2002; Correll, Park, Judd, Wittenbrink, Sadler, & Keesee, 2007). Accordingly, we expected that Muslim targets are likely to elicit a similar bias. We used morphing software to create targets who did or did not appear Muslim (wearing or not wearing a turban or the hijab) and who either held a gun or a similar object (e.g., a coffee mug; see Figure 3.7). Although participants did indeed shoot more at Muslims rather than non-Muslims, the most intriguing finding here is that

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negative mood actually reduced this selective tendency. Positive affect in turn triggered a significant selective bias against Muslims, consistent with a more top-down, assimilative processing style (Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Forgas, 1998, 2007). Thus, in this instance, negative mood reduced and positive mood increased stereotype-based aggressive responses to Muslims. Affective Influences on Interpersonal Communication If negative affect indeed promotes more accommodative processing, it may also influence the way people produce and respond to persuasive messages. Mood effects on persuasion have first been explored in studies looking at how people process persuasive messages. In a number of studies, participants in sad moods showed greater sensitivity to message quality, and they were more persuaded by strong rather than weak arguments. In contrast, those in a happy mood were less influenced by the message quality and were equally persuaded by strong and weak arguments (e.g., Bless et al., 1990; Bless et al., 1992; Bohner, Crow, Erb, & Schwarz, 1992; Sinclair, Mark, & Clore, 1994; Wegener & Petty, 1997). Can mood also influence the production of persuasive messages? To test this possibility, in one experiment participants received an audio-visual mood induction, and they were then asked to produce persuasive arguments for or against an increase in student fees and for or against Aboriginal land rights (Forgas, 2007). Their arguments were rated by trained raters for overall quality, persuasiveness, concreteness, and valence. Participants in a sad mood produced higher quality and more persuasive arguments

Figure 3.7 Stimulus figures used to assess the effects of mood and wearing or not wearing a turban on subliminal aggressive responses. Participants had to make rapid shoot/don’t shoot decisions in response to figures who did or did not hold a gun, and did or did not wear a Muslim headdress (a turban). Source: Unkelbach, Forgas, and Denson, 2008.

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Modulatory Processes 8.0

Argument rating

7.5

Happy

Neutral

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happiness may be misplaced and inconsistent with the important adaptive functions of both positive and negative mood states.

6.5 6.0

CLOSING COMMENTS

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on both issues than did happy participants (see Figure 3.8), and a mediational analysis showed that it was mood-induced variations in argument specificity and concreteness that influenced argument quality, consistent with the prediction that negative mood promotes a more accommodative and concrete processing style (Bless, 2001; Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Fiedler, 2001; Forgas, 2002). Similar effects were also found in an experiment where happy and sad people directed persuasive arguments at a “partner” to volunteer for a boring experiment using e-mail exchanges (Forgas, 2007). Once again, negative affect produced a distinct processing benefit, resulting in more concrete and specific, and thus, more effective and successful messages.

The fascinating relationship between feeling and thinking, affect and cognition, has been one of the enduring puzzles about human nature. Psychologists were relatively late in addressing this issue, but the past 30 years saw significant progress in experimental research on the role of affect in cognition. In this chapter, we reviewed the current status of this important enterprise, and we argued that mood effects on cognition can be classified into three distinct kinds of influences: mood congruence, mood dependence, and mood effects on processing strategies. In each of these fields, we surveyed strong evidence showing that mood states have a powerful and often subconscious influence on how people think, behave, and deal with social information. However, research also shows that these effects are subject to a variety of boundary conditions and contextual influences that we are only just beginning to understand. The complex interplay of affect and cognition is one of the most important, yet also most puzzling characteristics of our species. A great deal has been achieved in applying scientific methods to exploring this question, but in our view, the enterprise has hardly begun. We hope that this review will stimulate continuing research on this fascinating topic.

Implications

REFERENCES

In contrast with the overwhelming emphasis on the benefits of positive affect in the recent literature, these results highlight the potentially adaptive and beneficial processing consequences of negative as well as positive moods. Positive affect is not universally desirable: People in a negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors (Forgas, 1998), are more resistant to eyewitness distortions (Forgas et al., 2005), and are better at producing highquality and effective persuasive messages (Forgas, 2007). Given the consistency of the results across a number of different experiments, tasks, and affect inductions, these effects appear reliable and are broadly consistent with the notion that over evolutionary time, affective states became adaptive, functional triggers to elicit information processing patterns that are appropriate in a given situation. In a broader sense, these results also suggest that the persistent contemporary cultural emphasis on positivity and

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