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Not all happy people are lazy or stupid: Evidence of systematic processing in happy moods
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40 (2004) 341–349 www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp
Not all happy people are lazy or stupid: Evidence of systematic processing in happy moodsq Linda M. Isbell* Department of Psychology, 630 Tobin Hall, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Received 7 August 2002; revised 19 May 2003
Abstract Two experiments investigated the effects of mood on the use of global trait information in impression formation tasks. Participants in both experiments formed an impression of a target based on traits and a series of behaviors that were both consistent and inconsistent with the traits. In Experiment 1, participants in happy moods, relative to those in unhappy moods, made impression judgments that reflected the evaluative implications of the trait information to a greater extent than the behaviors, regardless of the order in which they received the information. In Experiment 2, both happy and sad participants engaged in systematic processing, as reflected by the recall data, but only happy participantsÕ recall of target information was significantly biased by the global trait information they received. These findings are consistent with the affect-as-information model in which affective cues influence the extent to which individuals rely on general knowledge and, importantly, are inconsistent with models that posit that happiness results in reduced motivation or ability to process information carefully. Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Affect and cognition; Mood; Information processing; Social cognition; Person memory
Introduction Research on affect suggests that happy and sad moods induce different styles of information processing (see Schwarz & Clore, 1996; Wyer, Clore, & Isbell, 1999). Happy moods, for example, appear to increase the use of stereotypes and other heuristics as a basis for judgment (Bodenhausen, Kramer, & Susser, 1994), and decrease attention to argument strength in persuasion tasks (e.g., Schwarz, Bless, & Bohner, 1991). On the basis of such findings, researchers have concluded that happy moods are associated with a heuristic processing style in which attitudes and judgments q
This research and the preparation of this article were partially supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Massachusetts and a grant from the National Science Foundation, 0132254. Appreciation is extended to Bob Wyer, Jerry Clore, Victor Ottati, Kate Burns, Paula Pietromonaco, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and advice on previous drafts of this article. * Fax: 1-413-545-0996. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2003.06.003
are based on peripheral cues rather than a thoughtful consideration of the information, whereas sad moods are associated with a systematic processing style in which attitudes and judgments are based on a careful scrutiny and elaboration of information. Researchers have proposed several hypotheses to account for these processing differences, and many posit that happy moods lead to a reduction in either ability (e.g., Mackie & Worth, 1989) or motivation (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 1994; Wegener, Petty, & Smith, 1995) to process information carefully. In contrast, the present research supports recent revisions of the affect-as-information model that do not posit these deficits, but instead suggest that happiness may lead to biased systematic processing. The affect-as-information model According to the affect-as-information (AAI) model, affective feelings provide individuals with conscious feedback about largely nonconscious, continuously operating appraisal processes. Consistent with prior
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theorizing about emotion (e.g., Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988), these processes allow individuals to appraise the goodness and badness of situations with regard to their personal goals and current concerns. Depending on these appraisals, different affective feelings result and serve as feedback that directs individualsÕ judgments and information processing (Clore, 1992; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Wyer et al., 1999). Thus, affective cues are functional and serve as a source of information. Schwarz (1990) postulated that positive affect signals that the environment is safe and benign and indicates that careful and detailed processing is unnecessary. In contrast, negative affect signals the presence of a problem and, therefore, motivates perceivers to scrutinize the situation carefully, leading them to engage in careful and systematic processing. Although this perspective posits that happy individuals are less motivated to process information than sad individuals, recent revisions of the AAI model eliminate the assumption that happiness is necessarily associated with deficits in either ability or motivation (e.g., Bless et al., 1996; Bless & Fiedler, 1995; Clore et al., 2001; Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, 1993; Wyer et al., 1999). According to recent revisions of the AAI model (e.g., Bless, 2001, see also Clore et al., 2001; Wyer et al., 1999), affective feelings not only provide an individual with information about the benign or problematic nature of a psychological situation, but may also influence oneÕs confidence in the validity of abstract information, such as stereotypes, scripts, and other general knowledge structures. BlessÕ (2001, Bless et al., 1996, Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996) mood-and-general-knowledge (MAGK) assumption states that affect provides individuals with information about the appropriateness of relying on general knowledge structures (e.g., scripts and stereotypes). Positive affect is likely to make one feel confident that relying on this information is appropriate given that it has been effective in the past. In contrast, negative affect is likely to make one feel less confident about relying on this information and thus, one should be less likely to do so. In contrast to predictions derived from the ability and motivation hypotheses, the recent AAI conceptualizations do not assume that individuals rely on general knowledge structures to the exclusion of other types of information (e.g., behaviors a target performed). Instead, the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption predict that happiness may lead individuals to use general knowledge structures to guide their processing of subsequent information, and may lead to integrative, elaborative processing. Consistent with this possibility, one study (Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996) found that a targetÕs category membership influenced participantsÕ processing of subsequent individuating target information when they were happy, but not when they were sad; both happy and sad participants also showed near-per-
fect recall of the information, suggesting that all participants processed it. These results suggest that happy individuals did not ignore the individuating information, but rather attempted to relate it to the targetÕs category membership. Thus, happy participantsÕ processing appeared to be no less ‘‘systematic’’ than sad participantsÕ (see Bless et al., 1996; Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Krauth-Gruber & Ric, 2000). Primacy effect or reliance on accessible general knowledge structures? With the exception of the recent revisions of the AAI model, affect and information processing conceptualizations imply that happiness leads to primacy effects on judgment. The revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption diverge from other conceptualizations in that they predict that happiness leads individuals to rely on categorical information (e.g., stereotypes and traits), regardless of the order in which it is received. That is, the AAI model predicts that happy individuals process information systematically, but their processing may be biased by the initial global information that they received about a target. In contrast, the motivation (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 1994) and ability (e.g., Mackie & Worth, 1989) conceptualizations assume that happy individuals do not process information extensively or go beyond initially presented information. Thus, these conceptualizations predict that happy individualsÕ judgments are influenced by categorical information only when it is received before other more specific information. Few researchers have attempted to disentangle whether affect influences the use of currently accessible categorical information or the use of initially presented information. The impression formation study described earlier (Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996) is one exception. When participants received individuating information before categorical information, they relied on only the individuating information as a basis for their judgments, regardless of their mood. These results are not surprising, however, given that the majority (75%) of the individuating information was evaluatively consistent. Thus, all participants may have felt confident that the impression they formed on the basis of the behaviors was appropriate at the time they received the categorical information. For this reason, they may not have relied on it. Given the scarcity of research in this area, it is unclear whether happiness fosters greater reliance on initially presented information, as predicted by the motivation and ability hypotheses, or whether it fosters greater reliance on categorical information (regardless of when it is received), as predicted by the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption. The first experiment directly tests these possibilities.
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Experiment 1 Experiment 1 relied on data collected during a telephone interview to examine the extent to which happy individuals rely on the evaluative implications of global trait information as a basis for forming an impression under conditions in which they receive this information either before or after specific behaviors that the target performed. In addition, participantsÕ reports of what information they attended to when forming their impressions were collected to assess whether happy individuals attend to both traits and behaviors. Method Participants Participants were 97 students (48 males) who agreed to take part in a brief phone interview. StudentsÕ phone numbers had been randomly selected from the student telephone directory. Procedure The experimenter phoned students and invited them to participate in a psychology study in which they would hear a story, form an impression of the character in the story, and then answer some questions about their impression. Students who agreed to participate were randomly assigned to one of four conditions reflecting the different combinations of information presentation order (global trait information first versus last) and global trait information (introverted librarian versus extroverted sales representative). Trait-first conditions. Participants learned that they would first hear background information about a person named Carol and then would hear a story about her. As part of the cover story, the experimenter explained that some of CarolÕs friends had provided the background information. Participants in the librarian condition heard that: ‘‘Carol is 32-years old and works as a full time librarian. Carol is a shy, introverted person who likes quiet time and leads an orderly life. Because of this, she finds her job as a librarian to be very satisfying.’’ Participants in the sales representative condition heard that: ‘‘Carol is 32-years old and works as a full time sales representative. Carol is an extroverted, sociable person who likes meeting people. Because of this, she finds her job as a sales representative to be very satisfying.’’1 1
Pilot data from 39 participants confirmed that students perceived extroversion more favorably than introversion. Participants evaluated a target more favorably when she was described as an ‘‘extroverted sales representative’’ (M ¼ 4:05) than an ‘‘introverted librarian’’ (M ¼ 3:06), tð37Þ ¼ 2:08, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :29.
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The experimenter then read the story, which described a series of behaviors that Carol performed. The story (adapted from Snyder & Cantor, 1979) included three introverted behaviors, three extroverted behaviors, and several behaviors that are neither introverted nor extroverted. After the story, participants rated how favorably they felt toward Carol along an 11-point scale ranging from )5 (very unfavorably) to +5 (very favorably). Participants next indicated the information they used when making their judgment by selecting one of the following: (1) job and trait descriptions, (2) specific behaviors in the story, or (3) both types of information. Finally, participants recalled the targetÕs occupation and rated how happy they were at the moment on an 11point scale (0 ¼ not at all happy, 10 ¼ extremely happy). Trait-last conditions. Except for the order in which the information was read, trait-last conditions were analogous to trait-first conditions. Scoring Mood groups. Based on their responses to the happiness question, participants who responded at or below the median were assigned to the relatively unhappy group and those who responded above the median were assigned to the relatively happy group. Participants in the relatively happy group were significantly happier than those in the relatively unhappy group (8.83 versus 5.95), tð95Þ ¼ 14:84, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ 1:50. Results Effects of happiness on target evaluations If happy participants rely on the first information they receive, then their judgments of the target should reflect the evaluative implications of the global information to a greater extent when this information appears first than when it appears last. In contrast, if happy participants rely on global, categorical information as a basis for their judgments rather than the first information they receive, then the effects of the trait information should be similar regardless of the order in which participants received it. The results are more consistent with the latter possibility. Overall, participants evaluated the sales representative more favorably than the librarian (2.82 versus 1.99), F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 4:17, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :18; however, this difference was significant only for relatively happy participants (3.53 versus 1.73), F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 9:94, p ¼ :005, CohenÕs f ¼ :30, not for relatively unhappy ones (2.11 versus 2.24), F ð1; 89Þ < 1. Overall, the interaction between happiness group and stereotype was significant, F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 5:66, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :22. Fig. 1 shows that a similar pattern of results emerged
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Fig. 1. Mean global evaluations as a function of trait information and mood under conditions in which the trait information was presented first and last (Experiment 1).
regardless of the order in which participants received the information, F ð1; 89Þ < 1.2 Effects of happiness on recall of global target information The different evaluations of the target as a function of happiness group cannot be attributed to differences in participantsÕ attention to the global target information. When asked to recall the targetÕs occupation, 75% of the
2
Given that mood is a continuous variable, it is generally appropriate to use regression techniques to assess statistical significance. Importantly, however, the use of regression assumes that the effects of mood on the use of global trait information are linear. An alternative possibility is that a threshold model explains the effects of mood on the use of global information. That is, individuals may use global information if they are above a certain happiness threshold, but not if they are below it. Given this possibility, and in order to communicate the findings more clearly in the text and figures, mood was dichotomized. However, the results of a hierarchical linear regression in which information presentation order was entered in step 1, trait and mood were entered in step 2, and the trait by mood interaction was entered in step 3 reveals a marginally significant interaction that parallels the effect reported in the ANOVA, r2 D at step 3 ¼ .03, F ð1; 92Þ ¼ 3:39, p < :07, b ¼ :218, B ¼ :185.
Fig. 2. Percentage of participants that indicated that they used only trait information, only behavioral information, and both types of information when forming their impression of the target under conditions in which the trait information was presented first and last (Experiment 1).
participants correctly recalled it. These participants were similarly distributed across experimental conditions, all p > :05, suggesting that relatively happy participants were no more likely than relatively unhappy ones to attend to the global target information. Effects of happiness on reports of information used to make judgments The revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption maintain that both happy and unhappy individuals may attend to and use behavioral information, but happy individuals may be more likely to use both the traits and behaviors. ParticipantsÕ reports of what information they used as a basis for their judgments suggest that this may be the case. Fig. 2 shows that the order in which participants received the target information did not influence their responses. Overall, as predicted by the revisions of the AAI model, 85.3% of the relatively happy participants reported that they used the job and trait
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descriptions of the target either alone (14.7%) or in combination with behaviors (70.6%), whereas only 51.7% of the relatively unhappy participants reported that they used either the traits alone (6.5%) or in combination with the behaviors (45.2%), X 2 ð2Þ ¼ 11:05, p < :01. Discussion Consistent with the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption, these results suggest that happy moods lead individuals to rely on global trait information as a basis for judgment, and not simply the first information they encounter. This finding suggests that prior results (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 1994) are not due to happy individuals relying more extensively on the initial information they received. Rather, they are likely the result of positive affect signaling that it is appropriate to rely on general trait information as a basis for forming an impression. Thus, individuals in happy moods may integrate trait and behavioral information (e.g., Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Krauth-Gruber & Ric, 2000), an idea that is consistent with participantsÕ reports about the type of information that they relied upon. It is not clear, however, if these reports reflect ‘‘real’’ differences in reliance on trait and behavioral information, or whether they are retrospective evaluations of the extent to which different types of information influenced their judgments. If participantsÕ reports are accurate, then differences should emerge when examining what information happy and unhappy participants can recall about a target. The method used in Experiment 1 precluded the collection of behavior recall data; therefore Experiment 2 investigated this possibility.
Experiment 2 Experiment 2 examined the types of information that happy and sad participants recall about a target when trait and behavioral information are presented in different orders. Predictions concerning what participants should recall under different order conditions were derived from person memory theory and research (e.g., Srull & Wyer, 1989; Wyer & Srull, 1989). According to the person memory model, participants with an impression formation goal encode the evaluative implications of target information in an attempt to determine whether a target is likable. In doing so, participants form a general concept of the person that is evaluatively congruent with the implications of initially presented trait information. Perceivers then think about subsequent behavioral information about the target in relation to their person concept. In an attempt to form a coherent impression, perceivers think more extensively about behaviors that are evaluatively inconsistent rather
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than evaluatively consistent with their person concept. Consequently, evaluatively inconsistent behaviors are recalled better than evaluatively consistent ones (see Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981; Srull & Wyer, 1989; Wyer, Bodenhausen, & Srull, 1984). The memory predictions described under conditions in which traits are received before behaviors do not generalize to conditions in which traits are received after behaviors (Wyer & Srull, 1989). Under these conditions, the trait information is likely to be used as a retrieval cue and influence what individuals recall about the target. Thus, evaluatively consistent behaviors are more likely to be recalled than evaluatively inconsistent behaviors (Wyer et al., 1984). According to the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption, happy participants should be more likely than sad participants to rely on global trait information regardless of when they receive it. When trait information is received first, happy participants should attempt to resolve evaluative inconsistencies between the traits and the behaviors. Thus, happy participants should process evaluatively inconsistent behaviors more thoroughly than evaluatively consistent ones and should show a recall advantage for evaluatively inconsistent behaviors. When trait information is received last, happy participants should rely on this information as a retrieval cue and, consequently should recall more evaluatively consistent than evaluatively inconsistent behaviors. Sad participants should be less influenced by trait information and, thus, should be less likely to show these recall biases. Importantly, the revised AAI model predicts that happy and sad individuals will recall different types of information, but not different amounts. In contrast, the motivation and ability conceptualizations predict that happy participants will process less information and, consequently, recall less information than sad participants. Experiment 2 evaluated these possibilities by relying on a traditional person memory paradigm that produces strong, reliable recall effects. This paradigm is well suited to address whether experimentally manipulated mood influences memory, however, the strongly evaluative nature of the traits used in this paradigm makes it unlikely that mood effects on judgments will emerge. Method Participants Participants were 157 introductory psychology students (59 males) who received partial credit toward a course requirement. Stimulus materials Trait descriptions. Following prior research (e.g., Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981), the target was described as either ‘‘cruel, cold, and hostile’’ (negative trait
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description) or ‘‘kind, warm, and friendly’’ (positive trait description). Behavior statements. Participants were presented with 32 behaviors describing the target (Wyer et al., 1984; Wyer & Martin, 1986). Six behaviors conveyed hostility, six conveyed lack of intelligence, six conveyed kindness, and six conveyed intelligence. In addition, eight evaluatively neutral behaviors were included as fillers. Information presentation. Participants received either the positive or the negative trait description either before or after the specific behaviors that the target performed. The trait information was presented for 10 s and each behavior was presented for 8 s. Procedure Mood induction. To insure privacy, participants were separated from one another during the experiment. The experimenter explained that a colleague at another university was collecting stories about studentsÕ life experiences to use in constructing a LifeEvent Inventory, and on this pretense, asked them to describe a recent happy or sad event in their lives. Participants were given approximately 10 min to write their stories. Impression formation task. After the mood manipulation task, participants were introduced to an ostensibly separate study concerned with ‘‘the processes by which individuals form impressions of others who they do not know’’. Under trait-first conditions, participants were told that before they read a series of behaviors that a target performed, they should read the background information that was obtained from talking with people who know the target. Under trait-last conditions, participants were told that they would read the background information after the behaviors. Distracter task. After reading the target information, participants completed a three-min visual perception distracter task to clear short-term memory for the behaviors prior to the recall task. Participants then completed the dependent measures described below. Liking judgment. Participants responded to the question, ‘‘How much do you feel that you would like John if you were to meet him?’’ and recorded their judgments along an 11-point scale ranging from )5 (dislike very much) to +5 (like very much). Recall. Following prior research (e.g., Wyer et al., 1984; Wyer & Gordon, 1982; Wyer & Martin, 1986), participants received approximately 5 min to write down everything that they could remember about the target, regardless of whether they considered the information when forming their impression. Mood manipulation check. Finally, participants indicated how they felt while writing their story along a 7point scale ranging from extremely unhappy to extremely happy.
Scoring Recall. Recall of target information was coded using a gist-scoring criterion. The proportions of intelligent, unintelligent, hostile, and kind behaviors recalled were computed for each participant by dividing the number of each type of behavior recalled by the number of each type of behavior presented. The person memory model predicts that under conditions in which participants receive trait information before specific behaviors that the target performed, participants form a person concept that is based upon the evaluative implications of the information, rather than the descriptive implications. Consequently, under these conditions, person memory theory and research predicts that individuals should recall evaluatively inconsistent behaviors better than evaluatively consistent ones, regardless of whether the behaviors are descriptively related (e.g.,Wyer et al., 1984; Wyer & Gordon, 1982, 1984; Wyer & Martin, 1986; see Wyer & Srull, 1989). For this reason, the proportions of kind and intelligent behaviors recalled were averaged for each participant and coded as evaluatively consistent for participants who were exposed to the positive trait description and coded as evaluatively inconsistent for participants who were exposed to the negative trait description. Similarly, the proportions of hostile and unintelligent behaviors recalled were averaged for each participant and coded as evaluatively consistent for participants who were exposed to the negative trait description and as evaluatively inconsistent for participants who were exposed to the positive trait description. Results Mood manipulation check As expected, participants reported greater happiness while writing about happy experiences (M ¼ 5:47) than while writing about sad ones (M ¼ 2:92), tð146Þ ¼ 11:31, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :93. Effects of mood on recall of target information The proportions of evaluatively consistent and evaluatively inconsistent behaviors that participants recalled were analyzed as repeated measures as a function of mood (happy versus sad), trait description (positive versus negative), and the order in which the trait information was presented (first versus last). Participants in trait-first conditions recalled a greater proportion of inconsistent behaviors (M ¼ :447) than consistent ones (M ¼ :398), whereas participants in trait-last conditions recalled a greater proportion of consistent behaviors (.456) than inconsistent ones (M ¼ :394), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 17:85, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :33. This interaction was qualified by the predicted higher order interaction involving mood, F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 6:16, p < :05, CohenÕs
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F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 1:83, p ¼ :18, CohenÕs f ¼ :07.3 Finally, happy and sad participants recalled equal proportions of the trait-relevant behaviors (.427 versus .421), F ð1; 149Þ < 1, suggesting that happy and sad participants were equally motivated and able to process the information. Supplementary analysis Liking of target. To investigate whether mood influenced participantsÕ target evaluations, judgments were analyzed by mood, trait description, and information presentation order. The negatively described target was evaluated more negatively (M ¼ :07) than the positively described target (M ¼ :95), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 4:48, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :15, however, no other effects emerged, all p > :20. Discussion
Fig. 3. Mean consistent and inconsistent recall as a function of mood under conditions in which participants received the global trait information first and last (Experiment 2).
f ¼ :18. As predicted, the effects of information presentation order and type of information recalled were only evident in happy mood conditions. As shown in Fig. 3, when happy participants received the trait information first, they recalled a greater proportion of inconsistent behaviors (M ¼ :466) than consistent ones (M ¼ :381), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 17:33, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :32. However, when happy participants received the trait information last, they recalled a greater proportion of consistent behaviors (M ¼ :477) than inconsistent ones (M ¼ :384), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 8:23, p < :01, CohenÕs f ¼ :21. Sad participants, in contrast, recalled similar proportions of inconsistent and consistent behaviors regardless of whether they received the trait information first (.429 versus .415), F ð1; 149Þ < 1, or last (.403 versus .436), F ð1; 149Þ < 1. As predicted, the interaction between information presentation order and recall type is significant for happy participants, F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 21:94, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :37, but not for sad participants,
These results suggest that when trait information is presented first, happy participants rely on it as a basis for processing subsequent behavioral information about the target; however, when they receive trait information last, they rely on it as a retrieval cue. Further, happy and sad participants recalled equal amounts of information. Thus, both happy and sad participants processed the behavioral information carefully, but differently. That is, happy participants were more likely to be guided by traits both during information processing and information retrieval. As suggested by the MAGK assumption, happiness may be associated with increased confidence in this information, whereas sadness may be associated with decreased confidence. Experiment 2 was designed to evaluate the effects of mood on recall of target information rather than target evaluations, and thus used a paradigm that is particularly strong in diagnosing differences in processing as a function of what individuals can recall. As anticipated, this paradigm failed to produce difference in judgments as a function of mood. Nevertheless, the recall data provide strong evidence that happy and sad participants differentially relied on the traits when processing and recalling the behaviors.
General discussion The current experiments provide an important test of the recent revisions of the AAI model. According to these revisions, affective cues provide individuals with feedback about the positive and negative implications of relying on 3 In addition, an interaction emerged between trait description, information presentation order, and information type, F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 39:70, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :50. This effect was not predicted and is not clearly interpretable. Consequently, it will not be discussed.
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accessible beliefs, expectations, inclinations (Clore et al., 2001; Wyer et al., 1999), and general knowledge structures (e.g., Bless, 2001). Positive affect tends to increase oneÕs confidence in this information and oneÕs likelihood of relying on it. In contrast, affective cues associated with unhappiness or sadness signal that reliance on this information is potentially problematic and thus tend to reduce oneÕs use of it. Only the recent revisions of the AAI model predict that (1) happy individuals will be influenced by trait information regardless of when they receive it, and (2) happiness is associated with systematic, but potentially biased, processing of detailed information following the receipt of global, categorical information. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 are consistent with this model. In both experiments, happy participants relied on the evaluative implications of global target information to a greater extent than relatively unhappy or sad participants, regardless of whether they received this information before or after detailed behavioral information. In Experiment 1 this was apparent from participantsÕ judgments of the target and, in Experiment 2, this was apparent from the types of information that participants recalled. Taken together, the results of these two experiments suggest that happiness may lead individuals to integrate trait and behavioral information, as suggested by Bless et al. (1996, Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996). The findings from Experiment 2 are similar to those reported in studies of person memory when trait information is received first (e.g., Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981; Srull & Wyer, 1989; Wyer et al., 1984) as well as when it is received last (e.g., Wyer et al., 1984). Because research on subjective well-being finds that individuals often report that they are happy (e.g., Diener & Diener, 1996), it is not surprising that these results are consistent with person memory research in which mood is not manipulated. The current results, however, suggest that sad affect leads individuals to process information differently than person memory research would predict under conditions in which trait information is provided. Sad individuals may form representations that are similar to those predicted when no trait information is presented. Under these conditions, individuals encode all of the behaviors in terms of traits and form a trait-behavior cluster for each trait (Wyer & Srull, 1989). Consequently, individuals may recall equal proportions of trait-consistent and trait-inconsistent behaviors. This possibility is consistent with the results for sad participants in Study 2; however, future research needs to investigate more fully the types of mental representations that sad individuals form. Relation to prior research The results of the present research are consistent with the AAI model and numerous findings reported in the literature (e.g., Bless et al., 1996; Bless & Fiedler, 1995;
Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Bodenhausen et al., 1994) and are inconsistent with hypotheses that posit deficits in happy individualsÕ ability or motivation to process information systematically. The revisions of the AAI model make no assumptions about affect-induced differences in ability or motivation. Instead, this model suggests that happy and sad individuals may process information systematically, but happy individualsÕ processing may be biased by initial global information. Experiment 2 provided strong support for this claim and revealed that happy participants in trait-first conditions engaged in inconsistency resolution, a process that requires both motivation and ability (Stangor & McMillan, 1992). Although the AAI model presented here maintains that motivation and ability to process information systematically is similar among happy and sad individuals, the possibility remains that happy participantsÕ motivation was increased in some conditions as a result of the stimulus materials used in the present studies. Research investigating heuristic and systematic processing in persuasion tasks (Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991) demonstrates that incongruity between a heuristic cue and detailed information can motivate otherwise unmotivated participants to process information systematically. In the context of the present studies, this research suggests that happy individuals in trait-first conditions may have initially lacked the motivation to process individuating information, but may have become motivated once they detected the incongruity between this information and the traits. This explanation seems unlikely, however, for three reasons. First, this explanation only applies to conditions in which traits were received first. Yet, similar findings were obtained in Experiment 1, regardless of the order in which participants received the information. Second, the majority of happy participants in Experiment 1 reported that they relied on both the traits and behaviors, whereas significantly fewer participants in the less happy group reported relying on both types of information. This finding is only consistent with the revised AAI model. Finally, in Experiment 2, under trait-last conditions, the recall data suggest that happy and sad participants processed the behaviors equally systematically. That is, happy and sad participants recalled equal amounts of the target information, but differed in the extent to which they relied on the traits as a retrieval cue. Conclusion Taken together, these findings support the recent revisions of the AAI model and are inconsistent with the motivation and ability interpretations. This conclusion is not meant to suggest that affect never influences motivation or ability to process information, but instead suggests that the role of affect in information processing is complex and variable. Future research will need to
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further specify the processing mechanisms that mediate the influence of affect on information processing both in the laboratory and in the real world.
References Bless, H. (2001). Mood and the use of general knowledge structures. In L. L. Martin & G. L. Clore (Eds.), Theories of mood and cognition: A userÕs guidebook (pp. 9–26). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bless, H., Clore, G. L., Schwarz, N., Golisano, V., Rabe, C., & Wolk, M. (1996). Mood and the use of scripts: Does a happy mood really lead to mindlessness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 665–679. Bless, H., & Fiedler, K. (1995). Affective states and the influence of activated general knowledge. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 766–778. Bless, H., Schwarz, N., & Wieland, R. (1996). Mood and the impact of category membership and individuating information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 935–959. Bodenhausen, G. V., Kramer, G. P., & Susser, K. (1994). Happiness and stereotypic thinking in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 621–632. Clore, G. L. (1992). Cognitive phenomenology: Feelings and the construction of judgment. In L. L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.), The construction of social judgments (pp. 133–163). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Clore, G. L., Wyer, R. S., Dienes, B., Gasper, K., Gohm, C., & Isbell, L. M. (2001). Affective feelings as feedback: Some cognitive consequences. In L. L. Martin & G. L. Clore (Eds.), Theories of mood and cognition: A userÕs guidebook (pp. 27–62). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Diener, E., & Diener, C. (1996). Most people are happy. Psychological Science, 7, 181–185. Hastie, R., & Kumar, P. A. (1979). Person memory: personality traits as organizing principles in memory for behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 25–38. Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2000). Affect and stereotypic thinking: A test of the mood-and-general-knowledge model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1587–1597. Mackie, D. M., & Worth, L. T. (1989). Processing deficits and the mediation of positive affect in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 27–40. Maheswaran, D., & Chaiken, S. (1991). Promoting systematic processing in low-motivation settings: Effect of incongruent information on processing and judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 13–25. Martin, L. L., Ward, D. W., Achee, J. W., & Wyer, R. S. (1993). Mood as input: People have to interpret the motivational implications of their moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 317–326. Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., & Collins, A. (1988). The cognitive structure of emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 527–561). New York: Guilford Press. Schwarz, N., Bless, H., & Bohner, G. (1991). Mood and persuasion: Affective states influence the processing of persuasive communications. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 24, pp. 161–201). San Diego: Academic Press. Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513–523. Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1996). Feelings and phenomenal experiences. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 433–465). New York: Guilford Press. Snyder, & Cantor (1979). Testing hypotheses about other people: The use of historical knowledge. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 15, 330–342. Srull, T. K. (1981). Person memory: Some tests of associative storage and retrieval models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 7, 440–463. Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. (1989). Person memory and judgment. Psychological Review, 96, 58–83. Stangor, C., & McMillan, D. (1992). Memory for expectancycongruent and expectancy-incongruent information: A review of the social and social developmental literature. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 42–61. Wegener, D. T., Petty, R. E., & Smith, S. M. (1995). Positive mood can increase or decrease message scrutiny: The hedonic contingency view of mood and message processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 5–15. Wyer, R. S., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Srull, T. K. (1984). The cognitive representation of persons and groups and its effect on recall and recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 445–469. Wyer, R. S., Clore, G. L., & Isbell, L. M. (1999). Affect and information processing. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. San Diego, California: Academic Press. Wyer, R. S., & Gordon, S. E. (1982). The recall of information about persons and groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 128–164. Wyer, R. S., & Gordon, S. E. (1984). The cognitive representation of social information. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wyer, R. S., & Martin, L. L. (1986). Person memory: The role of traits, group stereotypes, and specific behaviors in the cognitive representation of persons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 661–675. Wyer, R. S., & Srull, T. K. (1989). Memory and cognition in its social context. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Not all happy people are lazy or stupid: Evidence of systematic processing in happy moodsq Linda M. Isbell* Department of Psychology, 630 Tobin Hall, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Received 7 August 2002; revised 19 May 2003
Abstract Two experiments investigated the effects of mood on the use of global trait information in impression formation tasks. Participants in both experiments formed an impression of a target based on traits and a series of behaviors that were both consistent and inconsistent with the traits. In Experiment 1, participants in happy moods, relative to those in unhappy moods, made impression judgments that reflected the evaluative implications of the trait information to a greater extent than the behaviors, regardless of the order in which they received the information. In Experiment 2, both happy and sad participants engaged in systematic processing, as reflected by the recall data, but only happy participantsÕ recall of target information was significantly biased by the global trait information they received. These findings are consistent with the affect-as-information model in which affective cues influence the extent to which individuals rely on general knowledge and, importantly, are inconsistent with models that posit that happiness results in reduced motivation or ability to process information carefully. Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Affect and cognition; Mood; Information processing; Social cognition; Person memory
Introduction Research on affect suggests that happy and sad moods induce different styles of information processing (see Schwarz & Clore, 1996; Wyer, Clore, & Isbell, 1999). Happy moods, for example, appear to increase the use of stereotypes and other heuristics as a basis for judgment (Bodenhausen, Kramer, & Susser, 1994), and decrease attention to argument strength in persuasion tasks (e.g., Schwarz, Bless, & Bohner, 1991). On the basis of such findings, researchers have concluded that happy moods are associated with a heuristic processing style in which attitudes and judgments q
This research and the preparation of this article were partially supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Massachusetts and a grant from the National Science Foundation, 0132254. Appreciation is extended to Bob Wyer, Jerry Clore, Victor Ottati, Kate Burns, Paula Pietromonaco, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and advice on previous drafts of this article. * Fax: 1-413-545-0996. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2003.06.003
are based on peripheral cues rather than a thoughtful consideration of the information, whereas sad moods are associated with a systematic processing style in which attitudes and judgments are based on a careful scrutiny and elaboration of information. Researchers have proposed several hypotheses to account for these processing differences, and many posit that happy moods lead to a reduction in either ability (e.g., Mackie & Worth, 1989) or motivation (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 1994; Wegener, Petty, & Smith, 1995) to process information carefully. In contrast, the present research supports recent revisions of the affect-as-information model that do not posit these deficits, but instead suggest that happiness may lead to biased systematic processing. The affect-as-information model According to the affect-as-information (AAI) model, affective feelings provide individuals with conscious feedback about largely nonconscious, continuously operating appraisal processes. Consistent with prior
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theorizing about emotion (e.g., Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988), these processes allow individuals to appraise the goodness and badness of situations with regard to their personal goals and current concerns. Depending on these appraisals, different affective feelings result and serve as feedback that directs individualsÕ judgments and information processing (Clore, 1992; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Wyer et al., 1999). Thus, affective cues are functional and serve as a source of information. Schwarz (1990) postulated that positive affect signals that the environment is safe and benign and indicates that careful and detailed processing is unnecessary. In contrast, negative affect signals the presence of a problem and, therefore, motivates perceivers to scrutinize the situation carefully, leading them to engage in careful and systematic processing. Although this perspective posits that happy individuals are less motivated to process information than sad individuals, recent revisions of the AAI model eliminate the assumption that happiness is necessarily associated with deficits in either ability or motivation (e.g., Bless et al., 1996; Bless & Fiedler, 1995; Clore et al., 2001; Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, 1993; Wyer et al., 1999). According to recent revisions of the AAI model (e.g., Bless, 2001, see also Clore et al., 2001; Wyer et al., 1999), affective feelings not only provide an individual with information about the benign or problematic nature of a psychological situation, but may also influence oneÕs confidence in the validity of abstract information, such as stereotypes, scripts, and other general knowledge structures. BlessÕ (2001, Bless et al., 1996, Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996) mood-and-general-knowledge (MAGK) assumption states that affect provides individuals with information about the appropriateness of relying on general knowledge structures (e.g., scripts and stereotypes). Positive affect is likely to make one feel confident that relying on this information is appropriate given that it has been effective in the past. In contrast, negative affect is likely to make one feel less confident about relying on this information and thus, one should be less likely to do so. In contrast to predictions derived from the ability and motivation hypotheses, the recent AAI conceptualizations do not assume that individuals rely on general knowledge structures to the exclusion of other types of information (e.g., behaviors a target performed). Instead, the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption predict that happiness may lead individuals to use general knowledge structures to guide their processing of subsequent information, and may lead to integrative, elaborative processing. Consistent with this possibility, one study (Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996) found that a targetÕs category membership influenced participantsÕ processing of subsequent individuating target information when they were happy, but not when they were sad; both happy and sad participants also showed near-per-
fect recall of the information, suggesting that all participants processed it. These results suggest that happy individuals did not ignore the individuating information, but rather attempted to relate it to the targetÕs category membership. Thus, happy participantsÕ processing appeared to be no less ‘‘systematic’’ than sad participantsÕ (see Bless et al., 1996; Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Krauth-Gruber & Ric, 2000). Primacy effect or reliance on accessible general knowledge structures? With the exception of the recent revisions of the AAI model, affect and information processing conceptualizations imply that happiness leads to primacy effects on judgment. The revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption diverge from other conceptualizations in that they predict that happiness leads individuals to rely on categorical information (e.g., stereotypes and traits), regardless of the order in which it is received. That is, the AAI model predicts that happy individuals process information systematically, but their processing may be biased by the initial global information that they received about a target. In contrast, the motivation (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 1994) and ability (e.g., Mackie & Worth, 1989) conceptualizations assume that happy individuals do not process information extensively or go beyond initially presented information. Thus, these conceptualizations predict that happy individualsÕ judgments are influenced by categorical information only when it is received before other more specific information. Few researchers have attempted to disentangle whether affect influences the use of currently accessible categorical information or the use of initially presented information. The impression formation study described earlier (Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996) is one exception. When participants received individuating information before categorical information, they relied on only the individuating information as a basis for their judgments, regardless of their mood. These results are not surprising, however, given that the majority (75%) of the individuating information was evaluatively consistent. Thus, all participants may have felt confident that the impression they formed on the basis of the behaviors was appropriate at the time they received the categorical information. For this reason, they may not have relied on it. Given the scarcity of research in this area, it is unclear whether happiness fosters greater reliance on initially presented information, as predicted by the motivation and ability hypotheses, or whether it fosters greater reliance on categorical information (regardless of when it is received), as predicted by the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption. The first experiment directly tests these possibilities.
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Experiment 1 Experiment 1 relied on data collected during a telephone interview to examine the extent to which happy individuals rely on the evaluative implications of global trait information as a basis for forming an impression under conditions in which they receive this information either before or after specific behaviors that the target performed. In addition, participantsÕ reports of what information they attended to when forming their impressions were collected to assess whether happy individuals attend to both traits and behaviors. Method Participants Participants were 97 students (48 males) who agreed to take part in a brief phone interview. StudentsÕ phone numbers had been randomly selected from the student telephone directory. Procedure The experimenter phoned students and invited them to participate in a psychology study in which they would hear a story, form an impression of the character in the story, and then answer some questions about their impression. Students who agreed to participate were randomly assigned to one of four conditions reflecting the different combinations of information presentation order (global trait information first versus last) and global trait information (introverted librarian versus extroverted sales representative). Trait-first conditions. Participants learned that they would first hear background information about a person named Carol and then would hear a story about her. As part of the cover story, the experimenter explained that some of CarolÕs friends had provided the background information. Participants in the librarian condition heard that: ‘‘Carol is 32-years old and works as a full time librarian. Carol is a shy, introverted person who likes quiet time and leads an orderly life. Because of this, she finds her job as a librarian to be very satisfying.’’ Participants in the sales representative condition heard that: ‘‘Carol is 32-years old and works as a full time sales representative. Carol is an extroverted, sociable person who likes meeting people. Because of this, she finds her job as a sales representative to be very satisfying.’’1 1
Pilot data from 39 participants confirmed that students perceived extroversion more favorably than introversion. Participants evaluated a target more favorably when she was described as an ‘‘extroverted sales representative’’ (M ¼ 4:05) than an ‘‘introverted librarian’’ (M ¼ 3:06), tð37Þ ¼ 2:08, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :29.
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The experimenter then read the story, which described a series of behaviors that Carol performed. The story (adapted from Snyder & Cantor, 1979) included three introverted behaviors, three extroverted behaviors, and several behaviors that are neither introverted nor extroverted. After the story, participants rated how favorably they felt toward Carol along an 11-point scale ranging from )5 (very unfavorably) to +5 (very favorably). Participants next indicated the information they used when making their judgment by selecting one of the following: (1) job and trait descriptions, (2) specific behaviors in the story, or (3) both types of information. Finally, participants recalled the targetÕs occupation and rated how happy they were at the moment on an 11point scale (0 ¼ not at all happy, 10 ¼ extremely happy). Trait-last conditions. Except for the order in which the information was read, trait-last conditions were analogous to trait-first conditions. Scoring Mood groups. Based on their responses to the happiness question, participants who responded at or below the median were assigned to the relatively unhappy group and those who responded above the median were assigned to the relatively happy group. Participants in the relatively happy group were significantly happier than those in the relatively unhappy group (8.83 versus 5.95), tð95Þ ¼ 14:84, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ 1:50. Results Effects of happiness on target evaluations If happy participants rely on the first information they receive, then their judgments of the target should reflect the evaluative implications of the global information to a greater extent when this information appears first than when it appears last. In contrast, if happy participants rely on global, categorical information as a basis for their judgments rather than the first information they receive, then the effects of the trait information should be similar regardless of the order in which participants received it. The results are more consistent with the latter possibility. Overall, participants evaluated the sales representative more favorably than the librarian (2.82 versus 1.99), F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 4:17, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :18; however, this difference was significant only for relatively happy participants (3.53 versus 1.73), F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 9:94, p ¼ :005, CohenÕs f ¼ :30, not for relatively unhappy ones (2.11 versus 2.24), F ð1; 89Þ < 1. Overall, the interaction between happiness group and stereotype was significant, F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 5:66, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :22. Fig. 1 shows that a similar pattern of results emerged
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Fig. 1. Mean global evaluations as a function of trait information and mood under conditions in which the trait information was presented first and last (Experiment 1).
regardless of the order in which participants received the information, F ð1; 89Þ < 1.2 Effects of happiness on recall of global target information The different evaluations of the target as a function of happiness group cannot be attributed to differences in participantsÕ attention to the global target information. When asked to recall the targetÕs occupation, 75% of the
2
Given that mood is a continuous variable, it is generally appropriate to use regression techniques to assess statistical significance. Importantly, however, the use of regression assumes that the effects of mood on the use of global trait information are linear. An alternative possibility is that a threshold model explains the effects of mood on the use of global information. That is, individuals may use global information if they are above a certain happiness threshold, but not if they are below it. Given this possibility, and in order to communicate the findings more clearly in the text and figures, mood was dichotomized. However, the results of a hierarchical linear regression in which information presentation order was entered in step 1, trait and mood were entered in step 2, and the trait by mood interaction was entered in step 3 reveals a marginally significant interaction that parallels the effect reported in the ANOVA, r2 D at step 3 ¼ .03, F ð1; 92Þ ¼ 3:39, p < :07, b ¼ :218, B ¼ :185.
Fig. 2. Percentage of participants that indicated that they used only trait information, only behavioral information, and both types of information when forming their impression of the target under conditions in which the trait information was presented first and last (Experiment 1).
participants correctly recalled it. These participants were similarly distributed across experimental conditions, all p > :05, suggesting that relatively happy participants were no more likely than relatively unhappy ones to attend to the global target information. Effects of happiness on reports of information used to make judgments The revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption maintain that both happy and unhappy individuals may attend to and use behavioral information, but happy individuals may be more likely to use both the traits and behaviors. ParticipantsÕ reports of what information they used as a basis for their judgments suggest that this may be the case. Fig. 2 shows that the order in which participants received the target information did not influence their responses. Overall, as predicted by the revisions of the AAI model, 85.3% of the relatively happy participants reported that they used the job and trait
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descriptions of the target either alone (14.7%) or in combination with behaviors (70.6%), whereas only 51.7% of the relatively unhappy participants reported that they used either the traits alone (6.5%) or in combination with the behaviors (45.2%), X 2 ð2Þ ¼ 11:05, p < :01. Discussion Consistent with the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption, these results suggest that happy moods lead individuals to rely on global trait information as a basis for judgment, and not simply the first information they encounter. This finding suggests that prior results (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 1994) are not due to happy individuals relying more extensively on the initial information they received. Rather, they are likely the result of positive affect signaling that it is appropriate to rely on general trait information as a basis for forming an impression. Thus, individuals in happy moods may integrate trait and behavioral information (e.g., Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Krauth-Gruber & Ric, 2000), an idea that is consistent with participantsÕ reports about the type of information that they relied upon. It is not clear, however, if these reports reflect ‘‘real’’ differences in reliance on trait and behavioral information, or whether they are retrospective evaluations of the extent to which different types of information influenced their judgments. If participantsÕ reports are accurate, then differences should emerge when examining what information happy and unhappy participants can recall about a target. The method used in Experiment 1 precluded the collection of behavior recall data; therefore Experiment 2 investigated this possibility.
Experiment 2 Experiment 2 examined the types of information that happy and sad participants recall about a target when trait and behavioral information are presented in different orders. Predictions concerning what participants should recall under different order conditions were derived from person memory theory and research (e.g., Srull & Wyer, 1989; Wyer & Srull, 1989). According to the person memory model, participants with an impression formation goal encode the evaluative implications of target information in an attempt to determine whether a target is likable. In doing so, participants form a general concept of the person that is evaluatively congruent with the implications of initially presented trait information. Perceivers then think about subsequent behavioral information about the target in relation to their person concept. In an attempt to form a coherent impression, perceivers think more extensively about behaviors that are evaluatively inconsistent rather
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than evaluatively consistent with their person concept. Consequently, evaluatively inconsistent behaviors are recalled better than evaluatively consistent ones (see Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981; Srull & Wyer, 1989; Wyer, Bodenhausen, & Srull, 1984). The memory predictions described under conditions in which traits are received before behaviors do not generalize to conditions in which traits are received after behaviors (Wyer & Srull, 1989). Under these conditions, the trait information is likely to be used as a retrieval cue and influence what individuals recall about the target. Thus, evaluatively consistent behaviors are more likely to be recalled than evaluatively inconsistent behaviors (Wyer et al., 1984). According to the revised AAI model and the MAGK assumption, happy participants should be more likely than sad participants to rely on global trait information regardless of when they receive it. When trait information is received first, happy participants should attempt to resolve evaluative inconsistencies between the traits and the behaviors. Thus, happy participants should process evaluatively inconsistent behaviors more thoroughly than evaluatively consistent ones and should show a recall advantage for evaluatively inconsistent behaviors. When trait information is received last, happy participants should rely on this information as a retrieval cue and, consequently should recall more evaluatively consistent than evaluatively inconsistent behaviors. Sad participants should be less influenced by trait information and, thus, should be less likely to show these recall biases. Importantly, the revised AAI model predicts that happy and sad individuals will recall different types of information, but not different amounts. In contrast, the motivation and ability conceptualizations predict that happy participants will process less information and, consequently, recall less information than sad participants. Experiment 2 evaluated these possibilities by relying on a traditional person memory paradigm that produces strong, reliable recall effects. This paradigm is well suited to address whether experimentally manipulated mood influences memory, however, the strongly evaluative nature of the traits used in this paradigm makes it unlikely that mood effects on judgments will emerge. Method Participants Participants were 157 introductory psychology students (59 males) who received partial credit toward a course requirement. Stimulus materials Trait descriptions. Following prior research (e.g., Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981), the target was described as either ‘‘cruel, cold, and hostile’’ (negative trait
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description) or ‘‘kind, warm, and friendly’’ (positive trait description). Behavior statements. Participants were presented with 32 behaviors describing the target (Wyer et al., 1984; Wyer & Martin, 1986). Six behaviors conveyed hostility, six conveyed lack of intelligence, six conveyed kindness, and six conveyed intelligence. In addition, eight evaluatively neutral behaviors were included as fillers. Information presentation. Participants received either the positive or the negative trait description either before or after the specific behaviors that the target performed. The trait information was presented for 10 s and each behavior was presented for 8 s. Procedure Mood induction. To insure privacy, participants were separated from one another during the experiment. The experimenter explained that a colleague at another university was collecting stories about studentsÕ life experiences to use in constructing a LifeEvent Inventory, and on this pretense, asked them to describe a recent happy or sad event in their lives. Participants were given approximately 10 min to write their stories. Impression formation task. After the mood manipulation task, participants were introduced to an ostensibly separate study concerned with ‘‘the processes by which individuals form impressions of others who they do not know’’. Under trait-first conditions, participants were told that before they read a series of behaviors that a target performed, they should read the background information that was obtained from talking with people who know the target. Under trait-last conditions, participants were told that they would read the background information after the behaviors. Distracter task. After reading the target information, participants completed a three-min visual perception distracter task to clear short-term memory for the behaviors prior to the recall task. Participants then completed the dependent measures described below. Liking judgment. Participants responded to the question, ‘‘How much do you feel that you would like John if you were to meet him?’’ and recorded their judgments along an 11-point scale ranging from )5 (dislike very much) to +5 (like very much). Recall. Following prior research (e.g., Wyer et al., 1984; Wyer & Gordon, 1982; Wyer & Martin, 1986), participants received approximately 5 min to write down everything that they could remember about the target, regardless of whether they considered the information when forming their impression. Mood manipulation check. Finally, participants indicated how they felt while writing their story along a 7point scale ranging from extremely unhappy to extremely happy.
Scoring Recall. Recall of target information was coded using a gist-scoring criterion. The proportions of intelligent, unintelligent, hostile, and kind behaviors recalled were computed for each participant by dividing the number of each type of behavior recalled by the number of each type of behavior presented. The person memory model predicts that under conditions in which participants receive trait information before specific behaviors that the target performed, participants form a person concept that is based upon the evaluative implications of the information, rather than the descriptive implications. Consequently, under these conditions, person memory theory and research predicts that individuals should recall evaluatively inconsistent behaviors better than evaluatively consistent ones, regardless of whether the behaviors are descriptively related (e.g.,Wyer et al., 1984; Wyer & Gordon, 1982, 1984; Wyer & Martin, 1986; see Wyer & Srull, 1989). For this reason, the proportions of kind and intelligent behaviors recalled were averaged for each participant and coded as evaluatively consistent for participants who were exposed to the positive trait description and coded as evaluatively inconsistent for participants who were exposed to the negative trait description. Similarly, the proportions of hostile and unintelligent behaviors recalled were averaged for each participant and coded as evaluatively consistent for participants who were exposed to the negative trait description and as evaluatively inconsistent for participants who were exposed to the positive trait description. Results Mood manipulation check As expected, participants reported greater happiness while writing about happy experiences (M ¼ 5:47) than while writing about sad ones (M ¼ 2:92), tð146Þ ¼ 11:31, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :93. Effects of mood on recall of target information The proportions of evaluatively consistent and evaluatively inconsistent behaviors that participants recalled were analyzed as repeated measures as a function of mood (happy versus sad), trait description (positive versus negative), and the order in which the trait information was presented (first versus last). Participants in trait-first conditions recalled a greater proportion of inconsistent behaviors (M ¼ :447) than consistent ones (M ¼ :398), whereas participants in trait-last conditions recalled a greater proportion of consistent behaviors (.456) than inconsistent ones (M ¼ :394), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 17:85, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :33. This interaction was qualified by the predicted higher order interaction involving mood, F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 6:16, p < :05, CohenÕs
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F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 1:83, p ¼ :18, CohenÕs f ¼ :07.3 Finally, happy and sad participants recalled equal proportions of the trait-relevant behaviors (.427 versus .421), F ð1; 149Þ < 1, suggesting that happy and sad participants were equally motivated and able to process the information. Supplementary analysis Liking of target. To investigate whether mood influenced participantsÕ target evaluations, judgments were analyzed by mood, trait description, and information presentation order. The negatively described target was evaluated more negatively (M ¼ :07) than the positively described target (M ¼ :95), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 4:48, p < :05, CohenÕs f ¼ :15, however, no other effects emerged, all p > :20. Discussion
Fig. 3. Mean consistent and inconsistent recall as a function of mood under conditions in which participants received the global trait information first and last (Experiment 2).
f ¼ :18. As predicted, the effects of information presentation order and type of information recalled were only evident in happy mood conditions. As shown in Fig. 3, when happy participants received the trait information first, they recalled a greater proportion of inconsistent behaviors (M ¼ :466) than consistent ones (M ¼ :381), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 17:33, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :32. However, when happy participants received the trait information last, they recalled a greater proportion of consistent behaviors (M ¼ :477) than inconsistent ones (M ¼ :384), F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 8:23, p < :01, CohenÕs f ¼ :21. Sad participants, in contrast, recalled similar proportions of inconsistent and consistent behaviors regardless of whether they received the trait information first (.429 versus .415), F ð1; 149Þ < 1, or last (.403 versus .436), F ð1; 149Þ < 1. As predicted, the interaction between information presentation order and recall type is significant for happy participants, F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 21:94, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :37, but not for sad participants,
These results suggest that when trait information is presented first, happy participants rely on it as a basis for processing subsequent behavioral information about the target; however, when they receive trait information last, they rely on it as a retrieval cue. Further, happy and sad participants recalled equal amounts of information. Thus, both happy and sad participants processed the behavioral information carefully, but differently. That is, happy participants were more likely to be guided by traits both during information processing and information retrieval. As suggested by the MAGK assumption, happiness may be associated with increased confidence in this information, whereas sadness may be associated with decreased confidence. Experiment 2 was designed to evaluate the effects of mood on recall of target information rather than target evaluations, and thus used a paradigm that is particularly strong in diagnosing differences in processing as a function of what individuals can recall. As anticipated, this paradigm failed to produce difference in judgments as a function of mood. Nevertheless, the recall data provide strong evidence that happy and sad participants differentially relied on the traits when processing and recalling the behaviors.
General discussion The current experiments provide an important test of the recent revisions of the AAI model. According to these revisions, affective cues provide individuals with feedback about the positive and negative implications of relying on 3 In addition, an interaction emerged between trait description, information presentation order, and information type, F ð1; 149Þ ¼ 39:70, p < :001, CohenÕs f ¼ :50. This effect was not predicted and is not clearly interpretable. Consequently, it will not be discussed.
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accessible beliefs, expectations, inclinations (Clore et al., 2001; Wyer et al., 1999), and general knowledge structures (e.g., Bless, 2001). Positive affect tends to increase oneÕs confidence in this information and oneÕs likelihood of relying on it. In contrast, affective cues associated with unhappiness or sadness signal that reliance on this information is potentially problematic and thus tend to reduce oneÕs use of it. Only the recent revisions of the AAI model predict that (1) happy individuals will be influenced by trait information regardless of when they receive it, and (2) happiness is associated with systematic, but potentially biased, processing of detailed information following the receipt of global, categorical information. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 are consistent with this model. In both experiments, happy participants relied on the evaluative implications of global target information to a greater extent than relatively unhappy or sad participants, regardless of whether they received this information before or after detailed behavioral information. In Experiment 1 this was apparent from participantsÕ judgments of the target and, in Experiment 2, this was apparent from the types of information that participants recalled. Taken together, the results of these two experiments suggest that happiness may lead individuals to integrate trait and behavioral information, as suggested by Bless et al. (1996, Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996). The findings from Experiment 2 are similar to those reported in studies of person memory when trait information is received first (e.g., Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Srull, 1981; Srull & Wyer, 1989; Wyer et al., 1984) as well as when it is received last (e.g., Wyer et al., 1984). Because research on subjective well-being finds that individuals often report that they are happy (e.g., Diener & Diener, 1996), it is not surprising that these results are consistent with person memory research in which mood is not manipulated. The current results, however, suggest that sad affect leads individuals to process information differently than person memory research would predict under conditions in which trait information is provided. Sad individuals may form representations that are similar to those predicted when no trait information is presented. Under these conditions, individuals encode all of the behaviors in terms of traits and form a trait-behavior cluster for each trait (Wyer & Srull, 1989). Consequently, individuals may recall equal proportions of trait-consistent and trait-inconsistent behaviors. This possibility is consistent with the results for sad participants in Study 2; however, future research needs to investigate more fully the types of mental representations that sad individuals form. Relation to prior research The results of the present research are consistent with the AAI model and numerous findings reported in the literature (e.g., Bless et al., 1996; Bless & Fiedler, 1995;
Bless, Schwarz, & Wieland, 1996; Bodenhausen et al., 1994) and are inconsistent with hypotheses that posit deficits in happy individualsÕ ability or motivation to process information systematically. The revisions of the AAI model make no assumptions about affect-induced differences in ability or motivation. Instead, this model suggests that happy and sad individuals may process information systematically, but happy individualsÕ processing may be biased by initial global information. Experiment 2 provided strong support for this claim and revealed that happy participants in trait-first conditions engaged in inconsistency resolution, a process that requires both motivation and ability (Stangor & McMillan, 1992). Although the AAI model presented here maintains that motivation and ability to process information systematically is similar among happy and sad individuals, the possibility remains that happy participantsÕ motivation was increased in some conditions as a result of the stimulus materials used in the present studies. Research investigating heuristic and systematic processing in persuasion tasks (Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991) demonstrates that incongruity between a heuristic cue and detailed information can motivate otherwise unmotivated participants to process information systematically. In the context of the present studies, this research suggests that happy individuals in trait-first conditions may have initially lacked the motivation to process individuating information, but may have become motivated once they detected the incongruity between this information and the traits. This explanation seems unlikely, however, for three reasons. First, this explanation only applies to conditions in which traits were received first. Yet, similar findings were obtained in Experiment 1, regardless of the order in which participants received the information. Second, the majority of happy participants in Experiment 1 reported that they relied on both the traits and behaviors, whereas significantly fewer participants in the less happy group reported relying on both types of information. This finding is only consistent with the revised AAI model. Finally, in Experiment 2, under trait-last conditions, the recall data suggest that happy and sad participants processed the behaviors equally systematically. That is, happy and sad participants recalled equal amounts of the target information, but differed in the extent to which they relied on the traits as a retrieval cue. Conclusion Taken together, these findings support the recent revisions of the AAI model and are inconsistent with the motivation and ability interpretations. This conclusion is not meant to suggest that affect never influences motivation or ability to process information, but instead suggests that the role of affect in information processing is complex and variable. Future research will need to
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further specify the processing mechanisms that mediate the influence of affect on information processing both in the laboratory and in the real world.
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