The aim of this thesis was to examine the effects of people???s current moods and emotions on affective forecasting. The primary hypothesis was mood congruence: people currently feeling happy were expected to generate relatively positive affective forecasts and people currently feeling sad were expected to generate relatively negative forecasts compared to people currently in a neutral state. In addition, a moderated mood congruence hypothesis, predicted by the Affect Infusion Model (AIM, Forgas, 1995), stating that mood congruence effects are more pronounced under conditions of constructive processing, was tested. Two secondary hypotheses concerning the processing and motivational consequences of transient moods were also examined in each of the studies in this thesis. Studies 1 to 3 examined these hypotheses using a variety of manipulations of constructive processing. In Study 1, happy, neutral and sad participants made affective forecasts about a variety of everyday events, under overt instructions to process constructively or not. In Study 2, the ambiguity of the forecast was the manipulation of constructive processing. In Study 3, Need for Cognition, was used as a measure of constructive processing. Results of Studies 1-3, however, did not support either the mood congruence or the moderated mood congruence hypotheses. Further, neither of the secondary hypotheses was supported. Studies 4 and 5 examined the influence of transient high arousal emotions on affective forecasts. In Study 4, anxious or neutral people forecasted their feelings about an upcoming public speaking engagement and also rated their willingness to give a public speech. Study 5 replicated and extended Study 4 by examining how happy, sad and angry participants made those same predictions. In both Study 4 and 5, anxious people made more pessimistic forecasts and were less likely to engage in a public speech than were neutrals. This effect did not generalize to anger. Results suggest that while anxiety does have implications for affective forecasting and decision making, lower intensity moods and anger do not. Implications of these results are discussed with a focus on the benefits of an emotion-specific approach to the study of affect and affective forecasting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/258848 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Laham, Simon M., Psychology, Faculty of Science, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Psychology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Simon M. Laham, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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