Recalling Mixed Emotions

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� 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. ● Vol. 35 ● August 2008All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2008/3502-0007$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/588570

Recalling Mixed Emotions

JENNIFER AAKERAIMEE DROLETDALE GRIFFIN*

In two longitudinal experiments, conducted both in the field and lab, we investigatedthe recollection of mixed emotions. Results demonstrated that the intensity of mixedemotions is generally underestimated at the time of recall—an effect that increasesover time and does not occur to the same degree with unipolar emotions. Of note,the decline in memory of mixed emotions is distinct from the pattern found formemory of negative emotions, implying that the recall bias is diagnostic of thecomplexity of mixed emotions rather than of any association with negative affect.Finally, the memory decay effect was driven by the felt conflict aroused by theexperience of mixed emotions.

Imagine you are at Disneyland about to board the SpaceMountain ride. As you climb into your rocket, you feel

joy and apprehension—a mixed feeling that persists evenafter the ride is over. You grip the safety bar, at once thrilled(the music is pumping, the lights are pulsing) and frightened(a semirational fear: people have been thrown from theirrockets before). You leave the Space Mountain ride dizzywith mixed emotions. How will you recall your experiencea week later? Will you remember the mixed emotions youexperienced on the ride? Or will the memory of those mixedemotions fade?

Indeed, many of life’s most important events are definedby a mix of emotions—both positive and negative. Considergraduation from college (“I’m making progress, but leavingmy friends and family”), moving (“I’m starting a new life,but losing my old one”), or achieving major life goals (“I’mthrilled to have reached the destination, but am sad the jour-ney is over”). Increasingly, researchers have begun to ex-plore the nature of these mixed emotional experiences. One

*Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stan-ford University, Graduate School of Business, 518 Memorial Way, Stan-ford, CA 94395 ([email protected]). Aimee Drolet is associate pro-fessor of marketing at UCLA Anderson School, 110 Westwood Plaza, LosAngeles, CA 90095 ([email protected]). Dale Griffin is the Ad-visory Council Professor of Consumer Behavior at the Sauder School ofBusiness, University of British Columbia, 2053 Main Mall, Vancouver,BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 ([email protected]). The authors are listedalphabetically and contributed to this research equally. This research wasfunded by the Anderson School Class of 2000 Behavioral Research Lab-oratory and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Many thanks toAdam Grant, Pete McGraw, and Zakary Tormala for their insights on thisresearch.

John Deighton served as editor and Mary Frances Luce served as associateeditor for this article.

Electronically published April 29, 2008

stream of research has examined whether people can feelpositive and negative emotions simultaneously. This re-search suggests that mixed emotions can be experiencedjointly (e.g., Andrade and Cohen 2007; Larsen et al. 2004;Priester and Petty 1996; Thompson, Zanna, and Griffin1995), particularly during periods of transition (e.g., movingout of a college dorm) and when exposed to specific stimuli(e.g., watching the film Life Is Beautiful; Larsen, McGraw,and Cacioppo 2001).

Another stream of research has explored when people arelikely to experience mixed emotions (e.g., Fong and Tiedens2002; Levav and McGraw 2008; Williams and Aaker 2002).This research reveals that cultural background, chronic in-dividual differences, and situational factors can all moderatethe likelihood that mixed emotions are felt. For example,cultures that embrace Confucian and Buddhist philosophiestend to foster more experiences of mixed emotions relativeto cultures influenced by the Enlightenment and Christianity(Bagozzi, Wong, and Yi 1999).

However, neither stream of research has addressed thequestion of how mixed emotions (i.e., emotional states de-fined by both positive and negative emotions) are recalled,leaving unanswered many foundational questions regardingthe nature of mixed emotional experiences. How are mixedemotions remembered? What distinguishes memory formixed versus unipolar emotions? How does the memory ofmixed emotions change over time?

These questions are important because decisions aboutthe future are determined less by the online emotion ex-perience than by the memory of the emotion experience(Wirtz et al. 2003). Indeed, people attempt to maximize“remembered utility” (defined as a retrospective report oftotal pleasure or displeasure associated with past outcomes)rather than “experienced utility” (Kahneman, Wakker, andSarin 1997). This distinction emphasizes the fallibility of

RECALLING MIXED EMOTIONS 269

remembered emotions as markers of experience. Remem-bered utility can be measured by either (a) reports of pastexperience or (b) assessments of the current instantiation ofpast emotions. In this research, we focus on the first ap-proach—exploring subjective reports as cognitive summa-ries of past experiences. However, we go beyond the reportsof past pleasurable or painful experiences to include therecall of mixed emotional experiences. Our research ex-plores why remembered emotions (or remembered utilities)are fallible, and why the recall of mixed emotions meritsstudy in its own right.

RECALLING EMOTIONSA truism of psychological theory is that memory is not

a direct copy of the past but is reconstructive (Schacter1996). To recall memories, people use a variety of cues thathelp them draw inferences about past experiences (Robinsonand Clore 2002). For example, when people are asked torecall what their attitude toward a person or issue was 5years ago, they ask themselves (a) What is their attitudenow? and (b) Is there any reason to believe they felt dif-ferently then than they do now? If not, they assume theirattitudes have not changed (Ross and Conway 1986).

A similar process has been demonstrated with respect torecalling emotions. To illustrate, women who currently be-lieve that menstruation is particularly painful show a biastoward remembering more intense negative emotions duringmenstruation than they actually experienced (McFarland,Ross, and DeCourville 1989). Current beliefs (e.g., the beliefthat menstruation is associated with unpleasant physical andpsychological symptoms) can color the memory of prioremotion experiences. Over time, people rely less on episodicmemories of emotion experiences that link their recall tospecific details of the situation and more on semantic cuesthat link their recall to general beliefs and theories (Robinsonand Clore 2002).

Accordingly, memories of emotions are often inaccuratereflections of online experiences (Christensen, Wood, andBarrett 2003; Levine 1997; Thomas and Diener 1990; Wil-son, Meyers, and Gilbert 2001; Wirtz et al. 2003). Some-times, the distortion of past emotional events reflects a pos-itive bias (i.e., a “rosy glow”), whereby the recall ofemotions becomes more positive and less negative than theactual emotion experience was (Gilbert et al. 1998). Onereason for the positive bias is that, although the disappoint-ments felt during an experience can reduce the enjoymentof the moment, they may not reduce the enjoyment of thememory since those disappointments are fleeting (Mitchellet al. 1997). For example, parents remember time spent withtheir children as their happiest moments, even though onlineexperience-sampling data suggest otherwise (Kahneman etal. 2004). Consider the aforementioned Space Mountainride. The mixed emotions you experienced on the ride maynot be well remembered. Rather, the memory of fearfulelation may fade, replaced with the memory of the ride asthe highlight of your Disneyland visit—perhaps colored bythe last emotion you felt at the end of the ride (Lau-Gesk

2005) or because of the photos taken of you grinning earto ear after exiting the ride (Sutton 1992).

Memories of emotions can also become more negativeover time. For example, individuals with low self-esteem(Christensen et al. 2003) or who describe themselves asneurotic (Barrett 1997) recall experiencing more negativeemotions than they reported at the time. Accurate recall ofpast negative emotions is particularly difficult when one’scurrent belief system supports the negative bias. For in-stance, Gore supporters recalled that they were more un-happy right after the 2004 election than they actually were,perhaps because they were recalling how unhappy they werethrough the lens of their current, unrationalized view (e.g.,“Gore would have been a much better president; I must havebeen really unhappy when he lost”; Wilson, Meyers, andGilbert 2003). Further, in conditions where the “peak” or“end” of an online experience is negative, people often re-member that overall experience as more negative than itactually was (Fredrickson and Kahneman 1993). In the con-text of Space Mountain, this research implies that your mem-ory of the ride will be recalled more negatively if yourcurrent attitude toward Space Mountain is negative or thelast emotion you felt when you exited Space Mountain wasnegative.

In sum, research on the memory of emotions indicatesthat, over time, people tend to provide more unipolar as-sessments of recalled emotions, either more negative or pos-itive (Thomas and Diener 1990). And the tendency to pro-vide more unipolar assessments of recalled emotions appearsto be a function of the different kinds of information peopleattend to when making evaluations online versus retrospec-tively (Robinson and Clore 2002).

We build on this work by focusing on the memory ofmixed emotional experiences. We predict that, relative tounipolar emotions, mixed emotions are difficult to recallaccurately and are generally underreported at the time ofrecall. Underlying our prediction is the premise that, in thecase of unipolar emotions, the information that people attendto online is uniform—mostly all positive or all negative.Thus, any information recalled to construct an evaluationshould have the same valence.

The case of mixed emotions is different. With mixed emo-tion experiences, the information people attend to online isa blend of positive and negative information. When peopleconsider such mixed information, they often react with feel-ings of conflict and discomfort (Cacioppo, Gardner, andBerntson 1997; Priester and Petty 1996). In fact, this dis-comfort can trigger coping strategies to reduce or resolvethe feelings of conflict (Folkman et al. 1986). People oftenreappraise the elements that underlie their mixed emotions(Zanna and Cooper 1974), change certain emotions in realtime via “deep acting” (Hochschild 1983), or recognize andaccept the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions(Larsen et al. 2001). In contrast, such felt conflict typicallydoes not arise with unipolar emotions, even negative emo-tions (Williams and Aaker 2002).

However, it is important to note that not all people feel

270 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

conflicted when experiencing mixed emotions. The degreeto which people are concerned with attitudinal consistencyor the social desirability of their behaviors raises the like-lihood that mixed emotions arouse discomfort (Festinger1957/1962). More generally, whether a person feels dis-comfort when feeling mixed emotions appears to be con-tingent on a variety of individual differences (e.g., impul-sivity [Ramanathan and Williams 2007]; proclivity to thinkin abstract ways [Hong and Lee 2007]). For example, AsianAmericans are more likely to acknowledge and accept psy-chological contradiction compared to individuals from NorthAmerica (Spencer-Rodgers et al. 2004). Consequently, An-glo-Americans are more likely to feel conflicted than AsianAmericans are when viewing messages highlighting mixedemotions (e.g., both happiness and sadness; Williams andAaker 2002).

Thus, we predict that, in comparison to unipolar emotionssuch as happiness or sadness, mixed emotions are moredifficult to recall accurately. More specifically, we predictthat the memory of mixed emotions fades over time—thatmixed emotions are recalled as less intense than they wereexperienced. We believe that one underlying reason for thiseffect is that mixed (vs. unipolar) emotions are more likelyto spur feelings of conflict, thereby increasing the chancethat people will revise their views of their mixed emotionalexperiences. If so, we should be able to capture evidenceof this mechanism both with tests of mediation relying onmeasures of felt conflict as well as tests of moderation re-lying on culture as an independent variable. Formally,

H1: Compared to unipolar emotions, mixed emotionsare less likely to be recalled accurately and morelikely to be recalled as less intense than they wereexperienced.

H2: Feelings of conflict resulting from a mixed emo-tional experience underlie the decreases in theintensity of mixed emotions in recall over time.

H3: Culture moderates the memory decay effect,whereby Anglo-Americans are more likely thanAsian Americans to recall mixed emotions asless intense than they were experienced.

To test these hypotheses, we examined the recollectionof mixed emotions in two longitudinal experiments. Study1 was a field study demonstrating that the memory of mixedemotions fades over time (hypothesis 1), whereas the recallof unipolar emotions tends to become more intense overtime. It also provides initial evidence that feelings of conflictresulting from a mixed emotional experience underlie thedecreases in the intensity of mixed emotions in retrospectover time (hypothesis 2)—a pattern that does not occur forunipolar emotions. Then, utilizing both measures of felt con-flict (hypothesis 2) and tests of moderation (culture as anindependent variable; hypothesis 3), study 2 showed thatthe feelings of conflict resulting from a mixed emotionalexperience are indeed associated with the memory decay.

STUDY 1

The main objective of study 1 was twofold. First, weexamined whether the memory for mixed emotions changesover time, and indeed does so more than that for unipolaremotions. Second, we explored whether such an effect mightbe associated with an increase in feelings of conflict whenexperiencing mixed emotions. Thus, we directly examinedthe recall bias present in the memory of mixed versus uni-polar emotions, and whether mixed emotions may be as-sociated with greater levels of felt conflict. However, firstwe conducted a pretest to inform stimuli selection and togain insight into the most effective measures to assess mixedand unipolar emotions.

Pretest

Paid $3 each, participants ( ; , 59% fe-n p 96 M p 22age

male) were asked to “recall one event in your own past thatyou would characterize as creating mixed emotions—i.e.,combining positive (e.g., happy) and negative (e.g., sad)feelings.” After writing a short paragraph, they respondedto the question: “To what degree did this event make youfeel mixed emotions?” (0 p not at all; 7 p very much).Participants were then asked to circle how happy (happy,elated, upbeat, good, favorable, satisfied; ) and sada p .87(unhappy, disappointed, depressed, bad, unfavorable, dis-satisfied; ) they felt during this event. The emotiona p .89items were adapted from the PANAS scales (Watson, Clark,and Tellegen 1988), anchored by 0 (not at all) and 7 (verymuch), and were used in the main studies as well.

Reports of mixed emotions were relatively high on av-erage ( ), with transitions (e.g., breakups, movingM p 5.90away from home), test-taking contexts (e.g., midterms, finalexams), personal goals (e.g., health goals involving diet orexercise), and consumption contexts (e.g., both service en-counters and product mentions involving expectation-realitydiscrepancies, and transgression and recovery efforts) beingthe most frequently cited mixed experiences.

To determine whether recalled mixed emotion is a discreteconstruct relative to more unipolar happy and sad emotions,we examined the interrelationship among the three emotionindexes. The correlation between degree of recalled mixedemotion and recalled happy emotions was modestly negative( , ). The relation between degree ofr(93) p �.28 p ! .05recalled mixed emotion and recalled sad emotions was mod-estly positive ( , ). Thus, the recalledr(94) p .17 p ! .10mixed emotions were largely, but not completely, indepen-dent of both happy and sad emotions, indicating discriminantvalidity for the mixed emotional reports. Of note, when weoperationalized emotional ambivalence where the extent towhich opposing reactions toward the event are (a) similarin degree (similarity) and (b) extreme (intensity) (Thompsonet al. 1995), the results were not qualitatively different thanthe results found with the mixed emotion item. Thus, in themain studies, we focused on the mixed emotion item as themeasure to assess mixedness.

The results of the pretest revealed that, after transitions,


test taking was the most commonly cited mixed emotionalexperience mentioned (e.g., “I got a high grade on my lastmidterm while my friend who is also in the class got a poorgrade,” “Relieved that the test was over with and that Icould either go home or relax, but disappointed or scaredabout exam results or tests coming up”). We therefore focuson a test-taking context in study 1, and then turn to a tran-sition context (e.g., moving away) in study 2.

Method

One hundred and four MBA students ( , 48%M p 29age

female) who were enrolled in a consumer behavior courseat the University of California, Los Angeles, volunteered totake part in the study. A total of 14 individuals were absentduring the follow-up dates. Thus, 90 participants completedthe study, which stretched over 3 weeks ( , 47%M p 29age

female).In the middle of an 11-week course, students took a mid-

term exam. Grades were returned the following week. Thefirst wave of data collection took place when the gradedexam was returned. The instructor wrote three test scoreranges on the board at the front of the class (range 1 pabove average, range 2 p around average, range 3 p belowaverage) and then handed back the exams. After reviewingtheir exams, students received a questionnaire in which theywere asked to indicate the range that included their scoreas well as a code name (to preserve anonymity and to allowthe data to be linked across weeks). Of the 86 students whoreported their range, 43 scored within the average range, 23scored better than average, and 20 scored worse than av-erage. Next, participants rated the degree to which they feltmixed emotions (0 p not at all; 7 p very much) andcompleted the identical happy and sad emotions items askedin the pretest. Participants also rated the degree to whichthey “felt conflicted” when they received their midterm andsaw their score (0 p not at all conflicted; 7 p veryconflicted).

Time 2 took place 2 weeks after their graded exam wasreturned. Participants were asked to recall their exam rangeand then asked to “please circle how you felt when you gotyour midterm back and saw your score.” The same emotionsmeasured at time 1 were measured at time 2. Participantswere fully debriefed the following week.

Results and Discussion

Reliability of the multi-item scales was high for bothreports of actual emotions at time 1 ( for happy,a p .87

for sad) and reports of recalled emotions at timea p .922 ( for happy, for sad).a p .92 a p .91

We began by examining the correlations between unipolarand mixed emotions. Once again, these correlations revealedthat the mixed emotion report was distinct from the unipolaremotion reports. The unipolar emotions strongly reflect therelative “success” of the exam score. For example, experi-enced happy emotions correlated .74 with the actual score(p ! .001) and experienced sad emotions correlated �.66 with

the score (p ! .001). Further, recalled happy emotions cor-related .74 with the score ( ) and recalled sad emotionsp ! .001correlated �.67 with the score ( ). However, mixedp ! .001emotions were uncorrelated with success both immediatelyafter the experience ( , NS) and when recalledr(81) p .15after the delay ( , NS). Moreover, mixed emotionsr(81) p .09were only modestly correlated with the unipolar emotions atboth the time of exam return ( , NS, for happy emo-r p �.17tions, and , , for sad emotions) and at the timer p .37 p ! .01of recall ( , NS, for happy emotions and ,r p �.15 r p .37

, for sad emotions). At both the time of experiencep ! .01and the time of recall, positive and negative emotions werehighly negatively correlated ( and �.75,r’s p �.76 p !

)..001To test whether mixed emotions are recalled less accu-

rately than the two unipolar emotions, we relied on anANOVA with two fixed repeated factors: one two-level fac-tor (time: response at time of exam return or recall) and onethree-level factor (emotion: mixed, happy, and sad emotionalresponses). Although the ANOVA revealed no main effectof time ( , ) or emotion (F(1, 164 p .88 p 1 .35 F(2, 164 p

, ), it did reveal the hypothesized interaction.72 p 1 .40( , ). A planned set of Helmert con-F(2, 164) p 5.51 p ! .001trasts on the emotions factor showed that the interaction wasdriven by the comparison between the mixed emotion mea-sures, which decreased between times 1 and 2 (M p 3.97at exam return vs. at recall), and the two unipolarM p 3.43emotion measures, which both increased slightly betweentimes 1 and 2 ( at exam return vs. 3.50 at recallM p 3.38for happy emotions, and at exam return vs. 3.14M p 3.02at recall for sad emotions). The contrast representing thiscomparison was highly significant ( ,F(1, 82) p 7.43 p !

), thereby supporting hypothesis 1..001In contrast, the orthogonal contrast comparing the degree

of change in the two unipolar measures was not significant( , ). Simple effects tests revealed thatF(1, 82) p 0.01 p 1 .90both the reduction in mixed emotions and the increase inunipolar emotions were significant ( , ,t(82) p 2.24 p ! .05for mixed emotions, and , , for the com-t(81) p 2.15 p ! .05bined measure of unipolar emotions). Note that none of theabove results were qualified by any interaction with a three-level between-participants factor indicating how well par-ticipants had actually scored on the exam (worse, average,and better), an effect that dovetails with prior findings (e.g.,Jones, Yurak, and Frisch 1997, study 3). There were nodifferences in variances of the reported mood measuresacross time, allowing a clear interpretation of the meandifferences.

So far, our analysis has focused on accuracy at a meanlevel. We also compared the accuracy of recall from a cor-relational perspective. If recall perfectly mirrors actual ex-perience, the regression equation predicting recalled levelfrom actual level would have an intercept of 0 and a slopecoefficient of 1. In fact, results of the over-time regressionsfor the two measures of unipolar emotions were very closeto this pattern of accurate recall. In particular, for happy emo-tions, the intercept was .27 (NS) and the slope was .96


( ). For sad emotions, the intercept was .21 (NS) andp ! .001the slope was .97 ( ). In contrast, for mixed emotionsp ! .001the intercept was 1.11 ( ) and the slope was .54p ! .001( ), indicating considerably reduced accuracy andp ! .001more noise than that found for the unipolar emotions.

Finally, we examined the correlation between the feltconflict measure and mixed emotions, as well as that of thefelt conflict measure and unipolar emotions, all at time 1.The correlation between conflicted and mixed emotions wassignificant ( , ). Dramatically lower were ther p .90 p ! .001correlations between conflicted and happy emotions (r p

, ) and between conflicted and sad emotions�.19 p ! .07( , ). These results suggest a tight link be-r p .39 p ! .001tween mixed emotions and felt conflict, suggesting closeproximity on the causal chain. More important, however,they provide initial support for the premise that mixed emo-tions are in fact more highly associated with felt conflictthan are unipolar emotions.

In sum, regardless of how participants actually did on theexam, they reported moderately high levels of mixed emo-tions when their graded exam was returned to them. How-ever, their memory of those mixed emotions faded over time.This pattern did not occur with unipolar emotions. Further,empirical support was found for the premise that people feelmore conflicted when experiencing mixed emotion experi-ences versus unipolar emotion experiences.

We next examined whether the recall bias for mixed emo-tions was mediated by changes in perceived conflict, usingthe within-participant mediation test (Judd, Kenny, andMcClelland 2001). This test determines whether the changefrom experience to recall in mixed emotions is accountedfor by a concomitant change in felt conflict. The test forwithin-participant mediation regresses change on the de-pendent variable on change in the mediator and the sum ofthe mediator values at time 1 and time 2. Full mediation isindicated by a significant coefficient for the mediator co-efficient (indicating that change in conflict indeed predictschange in mixed emotions) accompanied by a nonsignificantcoefficient for the intercept term (indicating that changes inconflict predict all of the change in mixed emotions). Aspredicted, both conditions were met in our data: the changecoefficient for the presumed mediator (felt conflict) was .77,

, and the coefficient for the intercept was .21, p 1p ! .001.15, consistent with hypothesis 2. In contrast, perceived con-flict was largely unrelated to change in positive emotions( ) or change in negative emotions ( ).r p .01 r p �.09

Even with this evidence of mediation, one limitation ofstudy 1 is that it provides only correlational support for thelink between mixed emotions and felt conflict. The revealedmediational link between the decay of memory for mixedemotions and felt conflict was established on a longitudinal,but not experimental, basis. Thus, to gain a deeper under-standing into this process, we made two changes to theexperimental paradigm used in study 1. First, we recruitedparticipants with theoretically relevant cultural backgrounds(but who had similar knowledge of the English language):Asian Americans and Anglo-Americans. Our premise was

that if mixed emotions are difficult to recall accurately (rel-ative to unipolar emotions) due to the conflict or discomfortthat is felt when the mixed emotions are experienced (Hongand Lee 2007; Spencer-Rodgers et al. 2004; Williams andAaker 2002), we should observe distinct memory effectsacross cultural backgrounds. Specifically, since individualswith an East Asian (vs. North American) background ex-perience less conflict due to mixed emotions, they shoulddemonstrate greater accuracy in their memory for mixedemotions (hypothesis 3). Second, rather than relying on mea-sures to capture the degree to which an emotion experiencewas mixed or unipolar, we experimentally manipulated theemotion experience. This change allows us to make strongercausal inferences with respect to both our moderating (cul-ture) and our mediating (felt conflict) hypotheses.

STUDY 2

We have argued that feelings of conflict are one reasonwhy memory for mixed emotions fades with time. Accord-ingly, study 2 included both a measure of conflict for testsof mediation as well as an independent variable (culture)for a test of moderation of our effects. Our theorizing sug-gests that felt conflict will be experienced primarily for theAnglo-American respondents, and that the magnitude of feltconflict will predict the degree of bias for recalling mixedemotions. To shed more light on the pattern of memory foremotions over time, we included two time periods at whichmixed emotions were recalled, measuring the memory ofthe emotions 1 week after the experience occurred and again2 weeks later.

Method

Participants were MBA students at Stanford Universityand the University of California, Los Angeles, who vol-unteered to take part in a study over the course of 3 weeks( ; , 54% female). Students were catego-n p 45 M p 28age

rized into two cultural groups based on self-ratings. Anglo-American participants were those who had indicated theirethnic background to be “Caucasian” and their main spokenlanguage to be English. The Asian American participantswere those who had indicated their ethnic background to beAsian or Asian American and their main spoken languageto be English The students with complete data included atotal of 16 Asian American and 29 Anglo-American partic-ipants. (Unfortunately, the demographic data in study 1 weresparse; there was no ethnicity or cultural backgroundcollected.)

As a cover story, participants were told that researcherswere conducting a study to assess consumer responses topotential advertisements. Participants read: “On the nextpage you will see an example of a potential print advertisingmessage created for a new brand of moving company. Pleaselook at this advertisement and then answer the questionnairethat follows it about that ad and the brand it features.” Thestimuli involved two advertisements for the fictitious Trans-portex Moving Company. The ads were adapted from Wil-


liams and Aaker (2002) and were pretested to evoke eitherhappy or mixed emotions (both happy and sad).

Participants in the happy emotion condition read: “You’vebeen looking forward to this moment for so long. A newchapter in your life is just beginning, and the future is fullof exciting possibilities. You are looking forward to movingto a new neighborhood and the new friends you’ll make.It’s a happy and exhilarating time—you want movers whounderstand this. Movers who will make the move fun. Mov-ers you can trust. Let Transportex handle the details—andall you have to do is enjoy the ride!” The participants inthe mixed emotion condition read a slightly different story:“The moment has finally arrived. A chapter in your life isending, but another one is beginning. You’ll miss the neigh-borhood and the friends you’ve made, but you’re also look-ing forward to the future and the exciting possibilities itholds. It’s such a sad and a happy time, but it doesn’t haveto be stressful, too—you want movers who understand this.Movers you can trust. Let Transportex handle the de-tails—all you have to do is look back on your old life, andlook forward to your new one.”

Next, all participants read: “When you read the adver-tisement for Transportex Movers, please circle the emotionthat best describes how you felt. If you felt the feeling verystrongly, circle the 7, if you felt it somewhat strongly circlethe 4, if you did not feel it at all, circle the 0.” Relying onthe same emotions as in study 1 (i.e., felt conflict, mixedemotions, happy emotions, and sad emotions), emotion in-dexes were created for each of the three measurement oc-casions. Reliability was high for both happy (a’s rangedfrom .93 to .95) and sad emotions (a’s ranged from .78 to.87).

At time 2 (1 week after time 1), participants were recon-tacted in a classroom setting and read the following: “Lastweek, you saw an example of a potential print advertisingmessage created for a new brand of moving company: Trans-portex. We wanted to ask some additional questions. Usingthe scales below, please circle how you felt 1 week ago(when you viewed the ad for Transportex Movers).” Again,we clarified that the ratings were not of current emotionsbut rather of memories of last week’s emotions. Participantsprovided their recollections of their emotions. Finally, theywere asked to report their free recall of the content of themessage: “Finally, please try to recall as much as you canof the original description of the Transportex appeal. Writedown all that you can recall.”

Finally, at time 3 (2 weeks after time 1), participants wererecontacted and read the same instructions as those givenin time 2, except that they were reminded that they had seenan example of a potential print advertising message 2 weeksago and “to please circle how you felt 2 weeks ago (whenyou viewed the ad for Transportex Movers).” Again, theyreported their free recall of the advertising appeals. Partic-ipants were then fully debriefed.

Results and Discussion

To determine the extent to which different emotional ex-periences were evoked from the ads, an overall 2 (emotionalad condition: happy or mixed) # 2 (culture: Asian or AsianAmerican or Anglo-American) ANOVA was conducted onrepeated measures across the happiness index, the sadnessindex, and reports of mixed feelings at time 1. Gender andage were used as control variables. As expected, there wasa highly significant interaction between the emotional adcondition and the repeated-measures factor (F(2, 84) p

, ), such that reported happiness ( )8.99 p ! .001 M p 3.53was notably higher than either mixed feelings ( )M p 2.86or reported sadness ( ) in the happy ad condition,M p 1.84whereas mixed feelings ( ) were much higher thanM p 4.50either reported happiness ( ) or reported sadnessM p 2.91( ) in the mixed ad condition. These results dem-M p 2.97onstrate that the ads both conveyed the intended emotionalcontent and evoked the intended emotional responses be-tween conditions.

Next, we tested the proposition that only Anglo-Americanparticipants who experienced mixed emotions would feelconflicted and hence show a recall bias that systematicallydiminished their levels of recalled mixed emotions overtime. In contrast, Asian American participants who expe-rienced mixed emotions should not feel conflicted, therebyeliminating the memory decay for mixed emotions. (Norshould such a recall bias occur with anyone who experiencedhappy emotions.) We first examined this premise with aseries of contrasts within a mixed-model ANOVA with twobetween-participants factors (emotion and culture) and onewithin-participant factor (three levels of time: experienceand two follow-up recall measures). Means presented infigure 1 show support for our central prediction. Indeed, theonly sizable negative trend across time found was for thelinear decline in the mixed emotion measurement for theAnglo-American participants exposed to the mixed emotionad (simple effects linear trend: , ;F(1, 12) p 8.56 p ! .02quadratic trend: , ). The declines inF(1, 12) p 0.62 p ! .40negative emotions seen in the figure were significant forboth Anglo-American participants facing the happy messageand Asian American participants facing the mixed message(both ); no other simple effects were significant.p’s ! .01

Next, we tested via two stages the hypothesis that thedeclining pattern was unique to the Anglo-Americans whoread the mixed emotion message. In the first-stage analysis,the negative linear trend for the mixed emotions reportedby the Anglo-American participants in the mixed emotionalad condition was contrasted with the linear trend for themixed emotions reported in the other three conditions (An-glo-American participants facing the happy ad, the AsianAmerican participants facing the mixed ad, and the AsianAmerican participants facing the happy ad). The Helmertcontrast was highly significant ( , ).F(1, 39) p 8.59 p ! .01

In the second-stage analysis, parallel to the approach takenin study 1, we contrasted the time trend of the mixed andunipolar emotions. In a second-level Helmert contrast, wecompared whether the initial Helmert contrast across the


FIGURE 1

SUMMARY OF STUDY 2 RESULTS ACROSS TIME

four conditions differed for mixed versus the two unipolaremotions. Again, consistent with the patterns shown in thefigure, this cross-emotional contrast was significant (p !

). These results are consistent with hypothesis 1 and set.02the stage for examining hypotheses 2 and 3.

Our theorizing predicts that conflict will be felt primarilyby the Anglo-American respondents, and that the magnitudeof this conflict will predict the degree of recall bias for mixedemotions—a form of mediated moderation. In support, aHelmert contrast comparing the degree of conflict experi-enced in the Anglo-American respondents compared to theother three conditions was significant ( ,F(1, 42) p 4.10

). As predicted, the conflict experienced by the An-p ! .05

glo-American respondents facing the mixed ad was mark-edly greater ( ) than that experienced by any otherM p 3.77group (Anglo-Americans facing the happy advertisement,

; Asian American respondents facing the mixedM p 2.75ad, ; Asian American respondents facing theM p 3.00happy ad, ).M p 2.98

Consistent with the next step in a mediating model, feltconflict at time 1 predicted the degree of recall bias acrossthe three times ( , ). Further, it continued toB p .32 p ! .01predict the recall bias even when the contrast coding torepresent the condition differences was entered ( ,B p .29

). When felt conflict was added, the coefficient forp ! .01the Helmert contrast used above declined (from ,B p .85

to , ). A Sobel test (using the mod-p ! .05 B p .61 p 1 .12ified criterion suggested by MacKinnon et al. [2002]) wassignificant ( , ). In summary, felt conflict dif-z p 1.41 p ! .05fered predictably by condition, predicted the degree of mem-ory bias, and the pattern of effects found for felt conflictwas consistent with a model in which felt conflict mediatedthe moderating effect of culture on the recall bias.

An alternative explanation for these effects merits men-tion, however. It may be that the recall bias for mixed emo-tional experiences is only one indicator of a more generalconceptual difficulty in remembering emotionally mixedcontent. In other words, the recall bias may be a result ofsome general denial of the co-occurrence of positive andnegative events. As mentioned above, at each follow-up timepoint, participants not only recalled how they felt in responseto the Transportex appeals, but also what they recalled aboutthe message itself. Thus, an analysis of these free-recall dataprovides a test of the alternate “general mixed forgetfulness”explanation for our findings. Two coders blind to partici-pants’ condition or status reviewed all written recollectionsand counted the number of chunks that contained mixedemotional content. According to the “general mixed for-getfulness” alternative hypothesis, Anglo-American partic-ipants exposed to the mixed emotional appeal should dem-onstrate a general decline in reported recall of mixed content.Inconsistent with this hypothesis, the same Anglo-Ameri-cans who showed a bias to underreport their own felt mixedemotions displayed a higher level of mixed content in theirfree recall than the Asian Americans exposed to the mixedappeal (means of .52 vs. .10; , ). In othert p 2.22 p ! .05words, those who tend to forget the degree of mixed emo-tions they experienced are well able to remember the pres-ence of mixedness in the original situation—a result that isgenerally congruent with those of Williams and Aaker(2002) in distinguishing between felt emotions and the per-ception of depicted emotions.

GENERAL DISCUSSIONThe results of two longitudinal studies show that mixed

emotion experiences are more difficult to recall accuratelycompared to unipolar emotion experiences: over time, peo-ple remember mixed emotion experiences as less mixed—amemory decay effect that does not occur with unipolar emo-tion experiences. Moreover, this decline in memory appears


to be driven by the felt conflict that arises from the expe-rience of mixed emotions. The memory bias is particularlypronounced for Anglo-Americans, who tend to feel con-flicted when experiencing mixed emotions and, correspond-ingly, are more motivated to resolve the conflict. The recallbias did not appear for Asian Americans, who are less likelyto feel conflicted when experiencing mixed emotions (andthus less motivated to reduce that conflict). Together, theseresults indicate that as time passes, mixed emotions are in-creasingly difficult to recall, that memory for them fades,and that felt conflict underlies this recall bias.

By documenting the systematic underestimation of priormixed emotions in particular, our research contributes to agrowing body of work on the general difficulty people haverecalling emotions. Our findings fit well with a number ofstudies documenting that the memories of emotions are ofteninaccurate reflections of online experiences (e.g., Christen-sen et al. 2003; Gilbert et al. 1998; Thomas and Diener1990; Wilson et al. 2001; Wirtz et al. 2003). However, ourresearch departs from this stream. We demonstrate a direc-tionally distinct effect (memory decay) and a mechanismwhereby the mixed emotions give rise to feelings of conflict.The recall of mixed emotions is quite distinct from the pat-tern typically found for that of unipolar emotions.

Delving deeper into the distinctions between mixed emo-tion and unipolar emotion experiences is still necessary,however. Even if meta-emotional experiences such as thefeelings of conflict that arise from having mixed feelingsaccount for the effects found in this research, there may beother reasons why recall patterns differ for mixed versusunipolar emotions. For example, people may have implicittheories or cultural scripts about mixed emotions. Considera general lay theory suggesting that mixed emotions mustfade over time. In defining memories, people may believethat any emotionally ambiguous occurrences must eventu-ally be “decided.” To illustrate, in recalling your weddingday, you may come to think that it was a wholly happy day.After all, you married your true love on that day. Any mixedfeelings you may have had at the time have since beenresolved or can be attributed to relatively unimportant things(e.g., wedding-day jitters or the fact that the photographers’camera was stolen during the wedding). In this view, in-dividuals may hold implicit theories of mixed emotions thatinvolve the general belief that, as time passes, emotionaltruth is learned and mixed feelings may be (or should be)forgotten. Alternatively, people may be more motivated toprotect more unipolar happy or sad memories (Zauberman,Ratner, and Kim 2007). Future work is needed to investigatewhether people hold implicit theories of mixed emotionsthat might reflect social beliefs or self-deception, andwhether such implicit theories might influence memorydecay.

The results of this research speak to several domains ofresearch. For example, the results imply that individuals whoare comfortable with inconsistency should recall mixed emo-tions more accurately. Relatedly, if there is an increasedpropensity to resolve the meta-emotion of felt conflict, the

effects documented here should be mitigated for individualswho are not disturbed by the ambiguity associated withmixed emotions (Hong and Lee 2007). Similarly, the effectsshould be muted if the mixed emotions experienced arecomprised of a dominant emotion (e.g., strong feelings ofanger), thereby reducing the felt conflict experienced (Pries-ter and Petty 1996). An empirical examination of these pos-sibilities would more fully illuminate the boundary condi-tions of memory decay, as well as the developmentalchanges in the understanding, experience, and acceptanceof mixed emotions (Larsen, To, and Fireman 2007). Of par-ticular promise would be the examination of the neural sub-strates of emotion processes and identification of the keystructures in the brain involved in mixed emotional expe-riences and the memory of them (Davidson, Fox, and Kalin2007).

This research has several limitations that highlight op-portunities for future research. For example, this researchdid not consider when and why mixed emotions might beresolved in favor of positive or negative memories. Most ofthe work on the memory of emotions focuses on experienceswhere people have distinct theories that “pull” their recon-struction one way or another (Thomas and Diener 1990).This is not the case in the current research. If motivation topull the memory of mixed emotions toward the positive ornegative were present, we might have observed a more po-larizing set of results whereby recall of mixed emotions stillfades but is replaced by positive (or negative) memories.Indeed, future work examining when memories are pulledin a positive versus negative direction is needed.

A second line of research might focus on the exact natureof the felt conflict (Priester, Petty, and Park 2006). Is thefelt conflict associated with discomfort, disharmony, or con-fusion? How do individuals interpret this felt conflict? Pre-liminary research suggests that felt difficulty appears to bepart and parcel of the conflicted experience. For example,in a longitudinal field study, we asked participants (n p

) to select and pursue a health-related goal (e.g., improve58their diet or reduce stress) for 1 week. At time 2 (1 weeklater), participants rated their emotions after pursuing theirhealth-related goal. Most of the participants reported feelinghappy ( ) or mixed ( ); few reported feelingn p 23 n p 28sad ( ). At time 3 (2 weeks after time 1), participantsn p 7recalled their memories of their emotions at time 2. AnANOVA on the Recall Difficulty Index at time 3 confirmedthat those who felt mixed said it was “difficult to remembertheir feelings” from time 2 ( ) relative to thoseM p 4.14who reported feeling happy ( ) or sad (M p 2.96 M p

; Helmert contrast , ). Of note,2.00 F(1, 55) p 5.27 p ! .01self-rated importance of the health goal did not differ acrossthe three cells ( , , ;M p 5.34 M p 5.63 M p 5.00mixed happy sad

), suggesting that the relative difficulty people haveF ! 1recalling mixed emotions is not driven by differential levelsof importance for the distinct types of emotion experiences.

Also, the results here suggest that the felt conflict un-derlying the results is a subjective experience (Williams andAaker 2002, study 2), created by opposing but coexisting


emotions (e.g., happiness and sadness). One direction offuture research would be to explore whether, indeed, theeffects documented here still hold if the mixed emotions areof the same (rather than opposing) valence (e.g., happinessand pride). Theoretically, mixed emotions of nonopposingvalence should reduce the subjective experience of felt con-flict, thereby moderating the results found in the currentresearch.

Perhaps most interestingly, future research is needed tomore fully flesh out the causal chain. The high correlationbetween felt conflict and mixed emotions suggests that (a)the two constructs are closely located on the causal chain,and (b) other possible links between felt conflict and mem-ory deserve examination. Three causal avenues seem par-ticularly promising to explore. First, future research mightexamine the possible downstream effects of felt conflict.Indeed, felt conflict might be so aversive that individualsare motivated to resolve the conflict quickly. Hence, it maybe more difficult to recall mixed emotional experiences be-cause they do not last as long as unipolar experiences. Inthis explanation, feelings of conflict still drive recall biasfor mixed emotions; however, the consequences of felt con-flict have to do with amount of processing. However, giventhat people are likewise motivated to resolve negative emo-tions and yet the pattern of results for negative emotionsdiffers, this explanation is somewhat unconvincing.

A second causal avenue to explore is based on the copingresearch that suggests that people engage in a primary ap-praisal of stressful events followed by a secondary appraisal(Folkman et al. 1986). For Anglo-Americans, mixed emo-tions could be classified as a stressful event, but not so forAsian Americans. Thus, our findings may have less to dowith memory per se and more to do with the fact that peoplereappraise their emotions as the eliciting events fade in in-tensity. Furthermore, many argue that felt conflict oftenleads to meaningful progress in sense making, wherebymemories change in positive directions as a result of findingcoherence and benefit in a situation (Davis, Nolen-Hoek-sema, and Larson 1998). Future study is needed to explicatethe activated affective and cognitive constructs that lie be-tween felt conflict and memory, and how sense making maydiffer for mixed emotional experiences versus negative emo-tion experiences.

A third causal path to explore would involve an exami-nation of when mixed emotions are accurately encoded ver-sus retrieved (Braun, Ellis, and Loftus 2001) and whethermotivation (e.g., dissonance reduction) versus ability (e.g.,lack of the linguistic repertoires to make sense of mixedemotions) differentially affects the recall bias. For example,although the results of our research suggest that the suc-cessful encoding of mixed emotions occurred, researchwould still benefit from methodologies that allow more care-ful study of (a) the encoding processes and (b) the degreeto which mental taxation due to emotion complexity mayresult.

Before closing, several new insights merit mention as theyare particularly relevant for understanding consumer behav-

ior. Our results speak to ongoing research in marketing sug-gesting that emotional experiences can affect purchase intentas well as foster brand loyalty. For example, the amount ofwarmth that emanates from a brand or the fun enjoyed bya brand (e.g., iPhone) can fundamentally influence relation-ship trajectories (Aaker, Fournier, and Brasel 2004). How-ever, in reality, most consumer-brand relationships are de-fined, at some point or another, by a transgression that givesrise to negative feelings among consumers (Grayson andAmbler 1999). Our research suggests that the degree towhich a negative event is categorized as part of a mixedexperience (vs. standing alone as a single negative event;Lau-Gesk 2005) affects the probability that the consumerwill remember that experience and be influenced by it. Ifthe transgression is mentally clumped together with positiveinteractions with the brand, the memory of the mixed emo-tional experience may indeed fade, which would not be thecase if the transgression stood alone as an isolated negativeevent.

Finally, several interesting questions arise when consid-ering the current findings in light of past research. Are thereconditions under which mixed emotional states are remem-bered as exactly that—mixed in nature? And how mightsuch insights affect the anticipation of future emotionalstates (Priester et al. 2006) and behavior? Newby-Clark andRoss (2003, study 1) showed that people spontaneously re-call an affectively mixed past containing both positives andnegatives. In contrast, people anticipate homogeneously pos-itive futures. Follow-up research might explore whether thememory for mixed emotions wanes when the experience ismundane or ordinary (as may be the case with the eventsin the current studies) but is more resistant when it is sig-nificant in meaning (Newby-Clark and Ross 2003). Further,if mixed emotions are generally difficult to remember, dopeople tend to repeat behaviors that, in some normativesense, they should not? That is, if mixed emotions waneand hope springs eternal, is the past particularly likely torepeat itself? Will you ride Space Mountain again?

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Recalling Mixed Emotions