Return to search

Plans, schemas and affect

It has previously been suggested that a person's behavior in a place is mediated by his or her plans, and by his or her emotional response to the place; but the possible interactive effects of these influences have not been explored. Not only may a particular mood be the goal of a plan, but the process of planning may also produce changes in the planner's mood. It is here argued that a person's emotional response to a place is influenced by the extent of the alterations the place requires be made in his or her plans. It has been generally assumed that a person's liking of a place is decreased if it does not fit his or her plan, but the experiments reported here indicate that some incongruity may actually increase liking of a place if the person is able to modify the plans. Three experiments examined the effects of planning on two dimensions of mood--pleasure and arousal--and for liking of places. In experiment one, subjects who had just
completed planning a route for completing a list of errands reported higher arousal than subjects who had judged the time required to complete the same errands. In experiment two, subjects who executed their own plan reported higher pleasure than subjects who executed a plan they had been given. In experiment three, subjects who had to alter their plans to accommodate the unexpected features of a place reported higher arousal and pleasure, and increased liking of the place over subjects who did not have to re-plan. These results suggest that the process of planning has measureable effects on mood and that these effects influence place-liking. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/25528
Date January 1984
CreatorsSnodgrass, Jacalyn D.
PublisherUniversity of British Columbia
Source SetsUniversity of British Columbia
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, Thesis/Dissertation
RightsFor non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

Page generated in 0.0014 seconds