Download Affective Influences on Cognition

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
61
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
62
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
63
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
64
Modulatory Processes
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,
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
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,
65
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
66
Modulatory Processes
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
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
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
67
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).
68
Modulatory Processes
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
69
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
70
Modulatory Processes
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
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
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
71
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
72
Modulatory Processes
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
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
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
73
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
Modulatory Processes
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
74
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.
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
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.
75
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
Modulatory Processes
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
76
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Happy
Neutral
Sad
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.
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
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
77
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.
78
Modulatory Processes
8.0
Argument rating
7.5
Happy
Neutral
Sad
7.0
happiness may be misplaced and inconsistent with the
important adaptive functions of both positive and negative
mood states.
6.5
6.0
CLOSING COMMENTS
5.5
5.0
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
Adolphs, R., & Damasio, A. R. (2001). The interaction of affect and
cognition: A neurobiological perspective. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.),
Handbook of affect and social cognition (pp. 27–49). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Ambady, N., & Gray, H. (2002). On being sad and mistaken: Mood
effects on the accuracy of thin-slice judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 947–961.
Antrobus, J. S. (Ed.). (1970). Cognition and affect. Boston, MA: Little,
Brown.
Beck, R. C., & McBee, W. (1995). Mood-dependent memory for generated and repeated words: Replication and extension. Cognition &
Emotion, 9, 289–307.
Berkowitz, L., Jaffee, S., Jo, E., & Troccoli, B. T. (2000). On the
correction of feeling-induced judgmental biases. In J. P. Forgas
(Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition
(pp. 131–152). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Beukeboom, C. (2003). How mood turns on language. Doctoral dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam.
Blaney, P. H. (1986). Affect and memory: A review. Psychological
Bulletin, 99, 229–246.
Bless, H. (2000). The interplay of affect and cognition: The mediating
role of general knowledge structures. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling
4.5
4.0
Quality
Concreteness
Argument attribute
Figure 3.8 Mean ratings of the quality and concreteness of
persuasive arguments produced in a happy, neutral, or sad mood.
Source: Forgas, 2007, Experiment 2.
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition (pp. 201–222).
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Bless, H. (2001). Mood and the use of general knowledge structures.
In L. L. Martin (Ed.), Theories of mood and cognition: A user’s
guidebook (pp. 9–26). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bless, H., Bohner, G., Schwarz, N., & Strack, F. (1990). Mood and
persuasion: A cognitive response analysis. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 16, 331–345.
Bless, H., & Fiedler, K. (2006). Mood and the regulation of information
processing and behavior. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Hearts and minds:
Affective influences on social cognition and behaviour (pp. 65–84).
New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Bless, H., Hamilton, D. L., & Mackie, D. M. (1992). Mood effects on
the organization of person information. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 22, 497–509.
Bless, H., Mackie, D. M., & Schwarz, N. (1992). Mood effects on encoding and judgmental processes in persuasion. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 63, 585–595.
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. (1993). Emotions, arousal, and stereotypic judgments: A heuristic model of affect and stereotyping. In D. M.
Mackie & D. L. Hamilton (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and stereotyping
(pp. 13–37). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Bodenhausen, G. V., Kramer, G. P., & Süsser, K. (1994). Happiness and
stereotypic thinking in social judgment. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 66, 621–632.
Bohner, G., Crow, K., Erb, H.- P., & Schwarz, N. (1992). Affect and
persuasion: Mood effects on the processing of message content and
context cues. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 511–530.
Boltz, M. G. (2004). The cognitive processing of music and film
soundtracks. Memory and Cognition, 32, 1194–1205.
Bousfield, W. A. (1950). The relationship between mood and the production of affectively toned associates. Journal of General Psychology,
42, 67–85.
Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36,
129–148.
Bower, G. H. (1983). Affect and cognition. Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society of London B , 302, 387–402.
Bower, G. H. (1987). Commentary on mood and memory. Behavior
Research and Therapy, 25, 443–455.
Bower, G. H. (1991). Mood congruity of social judgments. In J. P.
Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and social judgments (pp. 31–53). Oxford,
UK: Pergamon.
Bower, G. H. (1992). How might emotions affect learning? In S. A.
Christianson (Ed.), Handbook of emotion and memory (pp. 3–31).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bower, G. H. (1994). Temporary emotional states act like multiple
personalities. In R. M. Klein & B. K. Doane (Eds.), Psychological
concepts and dissociative disorders (pp. 207–234). Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Bower, G. H., & Cohen, P. R. (1982). Emotional influences in memory
and thinking: Data and theory. In M. S. Clark & S. T. Fiske (Eds.),
Affect and cognition (pp. 291–331). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bower, G. H., & Forgas, J. P. (2000). Affect, memory, and social
cognition. In E. Eich, J. F. Kihlstrom, G. H. Bower, J. P. Forgas, &
P. M. Niedenthal (Eds.), Cognition and emotion (pp. 87–168). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bower, G. H., & Mayer, J. D. (1985). Failure to replicate mooddependent retrieval. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 23, 39–42.
Bower, G. H., & Mayer, J. D. (1989). In search of mood-dependent
retrieval. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 4, 121–156.
Bradley, P. P., & Mathews, A. M. (1983). Negative self-schemata
in clinical depression. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 22,
173–181.
79
Brown, J. D., & Mankowski, T. A. (1993). Self-esteem, mood, and selfevaluation: Changes in mood and the way you see you. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 421–430.
Burke, M., & Mathews, A. M. (1992). Autobiographical memory and
clinical anxiety. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 23–35.
Byrne, D., & Clore, G. L. (1970). A reinforcement model of evaluation
responses. Personality, 1, 103–128.
Ciarrochi, J. V., & Forgas, J. P. (1999). On being tense yet tolerant: The
paradoxical effects of trait anxiety and aversive mood on intergroup
judgments. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 3,
227–238.
Ciarrochi, J. V., & Forgas, J. P. (2000). The pleasure of possessions:
Affect and consumer judgments. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 631–649.
Clark, D. M., & Teasdale, J. D. (1982). Diurnal variation in clinical
depression and accessibility of memories of positive and negative
experiences. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 91, 87–95.
Clark, M. S., & Isen, A. M. (1982). Towards understanding the relationship between feeling states and social behavior. In A. H. Hastorf &
A. M. Isen (Eds.), Cognitive social psychology (pp. 73–108). New
York, NY: Elsevier.
Clark, M. S., & Waddell, B. A. (1983). Effects of moods on thoughts
about helping, attraction and information acquisition. Social Psychology Quarterly, 46, 31–35.
Clore, G. L., & Byrne, D. (1974). The reinforcement affect model
of attraction. In T. L. Huston (Ed.), Foundations of interpersonal
attraction (pp. 143–170). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Clore, G. L., Gasper, K., & Garvin, E. (2001). Affect as information.
In J. P. Forgas (Ed.). Handbook of affect and social cognition
(pp. 121–144). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Clore, G. L., & Storbeck, J. (2006). Affect as information about liking,
efficacy and importance. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.). Affect in social thinking
and behavior (pp. 123–142). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police
officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83,
1314–1329.
Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., Wittenbrink, B., Sadler, M. S., &
Keesee, T. (2007). Across the thin blue line: Police officers and
racial bias in the decision to shoot. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 92, 1006–1023.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the
emotions. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of
emotions (2nd ed., pp. 91–115). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Detweiler-Bedell, B., & Detweiler-Bedell, J. B. (2006). Mood-congruent
perceptions of success depend on self-other framing. Cognition and
Emotion, 20, 196–216.
Direnfeld, D. M., & Roberts, J. E. (2006). Mood-congruent memory in
dysphoria: The roles of state affect and cognitive style. Behavior
Research and Therapy, 44, 1275–1285.
Edwards, J. A., & Weary, G. (1993). Depression and the impressionformation continuum: Piecemeal processing despite the availability
of category information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 636–645.
Eich, E. (1995a). Searching for mood dependent memory. Psychological
Science, 6, 67–75.
Eich, E. (1995b). Mood as a mediator of place dependent memory.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 124, 293–308.
Eich, E. (2007). Context: Mood, memory and the concept of context.
In H. L. Roediger, Y. Dudai, & S. M. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Science of
memory: Concepts (pp. 107–110). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Eich, E. (2008). Mood and memory at 26: Revisiting the idea of mood
mediation in drug-dependent and place-dependent memory. In M. A.
Gluck, J. R. Anderson, & S. M. Kosslyn (Eds.), Memory and mind:
80
Modulatory Processes
A festschrift for Gordon H. Bower (pp. 247–260). New York, NY:
Erlbaum.
Eich, E., & Macaulay, D. (2000). Are real moods required to reveal
mood-congruent and mood-dependent memory? Psychological Science, 11, 244–248.
Eich, E., Macaulay, D., & Lam, R. (1997). Mania, depression, and mood
dependent memory. Cognition and Emotion, 11, 607–618.
Eich, E., Macaulay, D., Loewenstein, R. J., & Dihle, P. H. (1997).
Memory, amnesia, and dissociative identity disorder. Psychological
Science, 8, 417–422.
Eich, E., Macaulay, D., & Ryan, L. (1994). Mood dependent memory
for events of the personal past. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General , 123, 201–215.
Eich, E., & Metcalfe, J. (1989). Mood dependent memory for internal
versus external events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15, 443–455.
Eich, E., Ng, J. T. W., Macaulay, D., Percy, A. D., & Grebneva, I.
(2007). Combining music with thought to change mood. In J. A.
Coan & J. B. Allen (Eds.), The handbook of emotion elicitation and
assessment (pp. 124–136). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, H. C., & Ashbrook, P. W. (1988). Resource allocation model of the
effects of depressed mood states on memory. In K. Fiedler & J. P.
Forgas (Eds.), Affect, cognition and social behavior (pp. 25–43).
Toronto, CA: Hogrefe.
Ellis, H. C., & Moore, B. A. (1999). Mood and memory. In T.
Dalgleish & M. Power (Eds.), Handbook of cognition and emotion
(pp. 193–210). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Eysenck, M. W., MacLeod, C., & Mathews, A. M. (1987). Cognitive
functioning in anxiety. Psychological Research, 49, 189–195.
Feshbach, S., & Singer, R. D. (1957). The effects of fear arousal and
suppression of fear upon social perception. Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology, 55, 283–288.
Fiedler, K. (1990). Mood-dependent selectivity in social cognition. In W.
Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology
(Vol. 1, pp. 1–32). New York, NY: Wiley.
Fiedler, K. (1991). On the task, the measures and the mood in research
on affect and social cognition. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Emotion and
social judgments (pp. 83–104). Oxford: Pergamon.
Fiedler, K. (2001). Affective influences on social information processing.
In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Handbook of affect and social cognition (pp.
163–185). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Fiedler, K., & Bless, H. (2000). The formation of beliefs in the interface
of affective and cognitive processes. In N. Frijda, A. Manstead, &
S. Bem (Eds.), The influence of emotions on beliefs (pp. 144–170).
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Fiedler, K., Nickel, S., Asbeck, J., & Pagel, U. (2003). Mood and the
generation effect. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 585–608.
Forgas, J. P. (1979). Social episodes: The study of interaction routines.
London, UK: Academic Press.
Forgas, J. P. (1991). Mood effects on partner choice: Role of affect in
social decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61,
708–720.
Forgas, J. P. (1992). On bad mood and peculiar people: Affect and person
typicality in impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 62, 863–875.
Forgas, J. P. (1993). On making sense of odd couples: Mood effects on
the perception of mismatched relationships. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 19, 59–71.
Forgas, J. P. (1994). Sad and guilty? Affective influences on the
explanation of conflict episodes. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 66, 56–68.
Forgas, J. P. (1995). Mood and judgment: The affect infusion model
(AIM). Psychological Bulletin, 117, 39–66.
Forgas, J. P. (1998). Asking nicely? Mood effects on responding to more
or less polite requests. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
24, 173–185.
Forgas, J. P. (1999a). On feeling good and being rude: Affective
influences on language use and requests. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 76, 928–939.
Forgas, J. P. (1999b). Feeling and speaking: Mood effects on verbal communication strategies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
25, 850–863.
Forgas, J. P. (2002). Feeling and doing: Affective influences on interpersonal behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 1–28.
Forgas, J. P. (Ed.). (2006). Affect in social thinking and behavior. New
York, NY: Psychology Press.
Forgas, J. P. (2007). When sad is better than happy: Mood effects on
the effectiveness of persuasive messages. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 43, 513–528.
Forgas, J. P. (in press). Affective influences on self-disclosure strategies.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Forgas, J. P., & Bower, G. H. (1987). Mood effects on person perception judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53,
53–60.
Forgas, J. P., Bower, G. H., & Krantz, S. (1984). The influence of mood
on perceptions of social interactions. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 20, 497–513.
Forgas, J. P., Bower, G. H., & Moylan, S. J. (1990). Praise or blame?
Affective influences on attributions. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 59, 809–818.
Forgas, J. P., & Ciarrochi, J. V. (2002). On managing moods: Evidence
for the role of homeostatic cognitive strategies in affect regulation.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 336–345.
Forgas, J. P., & East, R. (2008a). How real is that smile? Mood effects
on accepting or rejecting the veracity of emotional facial expressions.
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 32, 157–170.
Forgas, J. P., & East, R. (2008b). On being happy and gullible: Mood
effects on skepticism and the detection of deception. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1362–1367.
Forgas, J. P., & Fiedler, K. (1996). Us and them: Mood effects on intergroup discrimination. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
70, 36–52.
Forgas, J. P., Goldenberg, L., & Unkelbach, C. (2009). Can bad weather
improve your memory? A field study of mood effects on memory
in a real-life setting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 54,
254–257.
Forgas, J. P., Haselton, M. G., & von Hippel, W. (Eds.). (2007).
Evolution and the social mind . New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Forgas, J. P., & Moylan, S. J. (1987). After the movies: The effects of
transient mood states on social judgments. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 13, 478–489.
Forgas, J. P., Vargas, P., & Laham, S. (2005). Mood effects on eyewitness memory: Affective influences on susceptibility to misinformation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 574–588.
Gasper, K., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Attending to the big picture:
Mood and global versus local processing of visual information.
Psychological Science, 13, 34–40.
Gebauer, J. E., Broemer, P., Haddock, G., & von Hecker, U. (2008).
Inclusion-exclusion of positive and negative past selves: Mood congruence as information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 470–487.
Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems behave. American Psychologist, 46, 107–119.
Gilboa-Schechtman, E., Erhard-Weiss, D., & Jecemien, P. (2002).
Interpersonal deficits meet cognitive biases: Memory for facial
expressions in depressed and anxious men and women. Psychiatry
Research, 113, 279–293.
Goodwin, D. W. (1974). Alcoholic blackout and state-dependent learning. Federation Proceedings, 33, 1833–1835.
Gouaux, C. (1971). Induced affective states and interpersonal attraction.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 20, 37–43.
Affective Influences on Cognition: Mood Congruence, Mood Dependence, and Mood Effects on Processing Strategies
Gouaux, C., & Summers, K. (1973). Interpersonal attraction as a function
of affective states and affective change. Journal of Research in
Personality, 7, 254–260.
Griffitt, W. (1970). Environmental effects on interpersonal behavior:
Temperature and attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 15, 240–244.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York,
NY: Wiley.
Hertel, G., & Fiedler, K. (1994). Affective and cognitive influences in
a social dilemma game. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24,
131–145.
Isaacowitz, D. M., Toner, K., Goren, D., & Wilson, H. R. (2008).
Looking while unhappy: Mood congruent gaze in young adults,
positive gaze in older adults. Psychological Science, 19, 843–853.
Isen, A. M. (1984). Towards understanding the role of affect in cognition.
In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition
(Vol. 3, pp. 179–236). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Isen, A. M. (1987). Positive affect, cognitive processes and social
behaviour. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social
psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 203–253). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Isen, A. M., & Daubman, K. A. (1984). The influence of affect on
categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47,
1206–1217.
Isen, A. M., Means, B., Patrick, R., & Nowicki, G. (1982). Some
factors influencing decision making strategy and risk-taking. In M. S.
Clark & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Affect and cognition: The 17th annual
Carnegie Mellon symposium on cognition (pp. 241–261). Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Jacoby, L. L. (1998). Invariance in automatic influences of memory:
Toward a user’s guide for the process-dissociation procedure. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24,
3–26.
Kelley, C. M., & Jacoby, L. L. (2000). Recollection and familiarity:
Process-dissociation. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The
Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 215–228). New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Kenealy, P. M. (1997). Mood-state-dependent retrieval: The effects
of induced mood on memory reconsidered. Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 50A, 290–317.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1989). On what does mood-dependent memory depend?
Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 4, 23–32.
Kihlstrom, J. F., Eich, E., Sandbrand, D., & Tobias, B. A. (2000).
Emotion and memory: Implications for self-report. In A. A. Stone,
J. S. Turkkan, C. A. Bachrach, J. B. Jobe, H. S. Kurtzman, & V. S.
Cain (Eds.), The science of self-report: Implications for research and
practice (pp. 81–99). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Koester, E. H. W., Raedt, R., Goeleven, E., Franck, E., & Crombez, G.
(2005). Mood-congruent attentional bias in dysphoria. Emotion, 5,
446–455.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. New York, NY: Touchstone/
Simon & Schuster.
Leight, K. A., & Ellis, H. C. (1981). Emotional mood states, strategies,
and state-dependency in memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and
Verbal Behavior, 20, 251–266.
Lewinsohn, P. M., & Rosenbaum, M. (1987). Recall of parental behavior by acute depressives, remitted depressives, and nondepressives.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 611–619.
Ludwig, A. M. (1984). Intoxication and sobriety: Implications for the
understanding of multiple personality. Psychiatric Clinics of North
America, 7, 161–169.
Macaulay, D., Ryan, L., & Eich, E. (1993). Mood dependence in
implicit and explicit memory. In P. Graf & M. E. J. Masson
(Eds.), Implicit memory: New directions in cognition, development,
and neuropsychology (pp. 75–94). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Martin, L. (2000). Moods don’t convey information: Moods in context
do. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role of affect
81
in social cognition (pp. 153–177). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Martin, M. (1990). On the induction of mood. Clinical Psychology
Review , 10, 669–697.
Mathews, A. M., & MacLeod, C. (1994). Cognitive approaches to
emotion and emotional disorders. Annual Review of Psychology, 45,
25–50.
Mayer, J. D., Gaschke, Y. N., Braverman, D. L., & Evans, T. W. (1992).
Mood-congruent judgment is a general effect. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 63, 119–132.
Miranda, R., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (2005). Mood congruence in childhood
and recent autobiographical memory. Cognition and Emotion, 19,
981–998.
Moritz, S., & Glaescher, J. (2005). Investigation of mood-congruent false
and true memory recognition in depression. Depression and Anxiety,
21, 9–17.
Niedenthal, P., & Halberstadt, J. (2000). Grounding categories in emotional response. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role
of affect in social cognition (pp. 357–386). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Niedenthal, P. M., & Setterlund, M. B. (1994). Emotion congruence in perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20,
401–411.
Nissen, M. J., Ross, J. L., Willingham, D. B., MacKenzie, T. B., &
Schacter, D. L. (1988). Memory and awareness in a patient with
multiple personality disorder. Brain and Cognition, 8, 21–38.
Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child . New York, NY:
Free Press.
Putnam, F. W. (1989). Diagnosis and treatment of multiple personality
disorder. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Rapaport, D. (1942/1961). Emotions and memory. New York, NY:
Science Editions.
Razran, G. H. S. (1940). Conditioned response changes in rating
and appraising sociopolitical slogans. Psychological Bulletin, 37,
481–493.
Reus, V. I., Weingartner, H., & Post, R. M. (1979). Clinical implications
of state-dependent learning. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136,
927–931.
Roediger, H. L. (1990). Implicit memory: Retention without remembering. American Psychologist, 45, 1043–1056.
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1993). Implicit memory in
normal human subjects. In F. Boller & J. Grafman (Eds.), Handbook
of neuropsychology (Vol. 8, pp. 63–131). Amsterdam, Netherlands:
Elsevier.
Ruiz-Caballero, J. A., & Gonzalez, P. (1994). Implicit and explicit
memory bias in depressed and non-depressed subjects. Cognition
and Emotion, 8, 555–570.
Russell, J. A., & Lemay, G. (2000). Emotion concepts. In M. Lewis
& J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed.,
pp. 491–503). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Rusting, C. L. (2001). Personality as a mediator of affective influences
on social cognition. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.). Handbook of affect and
social cognition (pp. 371–391). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schacter, D. L., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1989). Functional amnesia. In
F. Boller & J. Grafman (Eds.), Handbook of neuropsychology (Vol. 3,
pp. 209–230). New York, NY: Elsevier.
Schiffenbauer, A. I. (1974). Effect of observer’s emotional state on
judgments of the emotional state of others. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 30, 31–35.
Schramke, C. J., & Bauer, R. M. (1997). State-dependent learning in
older and younger adults. Psychology and Aging, 12, 255–262.
Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states. In E. T. Higgins & R. Sorrentino
(Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (Vol. 2, pp. 527–561).
New York, NY: Guilford Press.
82
Modulatory Processes
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. (1988). How do I feel about it? The
informative function of affective states. In K. Fiedler & J. P. Forgas
(Eds.), Affect, cognition, and social behavior (pp. 44–62). Toronto,
Canada: Hogrefe.
Sedikides, C. (1994). Incongruent effects of sad mood on self-conception
valence: It’s a matter of time. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 161–172.
Sedikides, C. (1995). Central and peripheral self-conceptions are differentially influenced by mood: Tests of the differential sensitivity hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69,
759–777.
Sinclair, R. C. (1988). Mood, categorization breadth, and performance
appraisal: The effects of order of information acquisition and affective state on halo, accuracy, and evaluations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 42, 22–46.
Sinclair, R. C., Mark, M. M., & Clore, G. L. (1994). Mood-related persuasion depends on misattributions. Social Cognition, 12, 309–326.
Singer, J. A., & Salovey, P. (1988). Mood and memory: Evaluating the
network theory of affect. Clinical Psychology Review , 8, 211–251.
Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation
of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Learning and Memory, 4, 592–604.
Smith, S. M., & Petty, R. E. (1995). Personality moderators of mood
congruency effects on cognition: The role of self-esteem and negative
mood regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68,
1092–1107.
Snyder, M., & White, P. (1982). Moods and memories: Elation, depression, and the remembering of the events of one’s life. Journal of
Personality, 50, 149–167.
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2005). With sadness comes accuracy, with
happiness, false memory. Psychological Science 16 (10), 785–791.
Tobias, B. A. (1992). Mood effects on explicit and implicit memory.
Unpublished dissertation, University of Arizona.
Tobias, B. A., Kihlstrom, J. F., & Schacter, D. L. (1992). Emotion and
implicit memory. In S.-A. Christianson (Ed.), Handbook of emotion
and memory (pp. 67–92). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ucros, C. G. (1989). Mood state-dependent memory: A meta-analysis.
Cognition & Emotion, 3, 139–167.
Unkelbach, C., Forgas, J. P., & Denson, T. F. (2008). The turban effect:
The influence of Muslim headgear and induced affect on aggressive
responses in the shooter bias paradigm. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 44, 1409–1413.
Watkins, T., Mathews, A. M., Williamson, D. A., & Fuller, R. (1992).
Mood congruent memory in depression: Emotional priming or elaboration. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 101, 581–586.
Watson, J. B. (1929). Behaviorism. New York, NY: Norton.
Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1–14.
Watts, F. N., & Dalgleish, T. (1991). Memory for phobia related words
in spider phobics. Cognition & Emotion, 5, 313–329.
Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological
Review , 101, 34–52.
Wegener, D. T., & Petty, R. E. (1997). The flexible correction model: The
role of naı̈ve theories of bias in bias correction. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.),
Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 29, pp. 141–208).
New York, NY: Academic Press.
Weingartner, H., Miller, H., & Murphy, D. L. (1977). Mood-statedependent retrieval of verbal associations. Journal of Abnormal
Psychology, 86, 276–284.