The Influence of Mood on Perceptions of Social …stanford.edu/~gbower/1984/influence_mood_perceptions.pdfThe Influence of Mood on Perceptions of Social Interactions ... (Bower, 1983;

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCJAL PSYCIIOLOGY 20, 497-513 (1984)

The Influence of Mood on Perceptions of Social Interactions

JOSEPH P. FORGAS

Justus Liebig CJni\,ersity of Giessen, West Germanv und Unirsersity of Neal South Wales, Australia

AND GORDON H. BOWER AND SUSAN E. KRANTZ

Received May 17. 1983

Interpreting our own and others’ social behaviors is an important cognitive task in everyday life. Recent work in cognitive psychology suggests that temporary mood states may have a significant effect on the way information about common social events is processed. This study investigated how (a) a person’s current mood, (b) the target of the judgments (self vs other). and tc) the characteristics of the social episode (formal-informal: intimate-nonintimate) influenced people’s assessment of, and memory for, social behaviors. Subjects were videotaped while engaging in four different kinds of interactions with trained confederates. One day later subjects were hypnotized, and a happy, positive, or depressed, negative mood was induced. They then watched and rated their own and their partner’s interactions on the videotape. Results showed strong mood influence on behavior assessments and recall memory, and significant effects due to target (self vs other) and the type of interaction episode. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for contemporary research on social cognition, and their relevance to cognitively based theories of social maladjustment and depression are considered. IZ 1984 Academic ~rear. Inc.

In everyday social life we are often faced with the task of recalling and interpreting our own and others’ social behaviors. Asking questions such as “Did I do the right thing?” “Was I friendly enough?” or “Should I have talked less?” is common enough after routine, everyday encounters and is certainly part of the typical postmortem performed after more demanding episodes, such as a job interview, a court appearance, a date, or a party. The performance of such tasks involves a range of complex

Support from the National Institutes of Mental Health, Grant No. MH-13950 to Gordon Bower, and from the Australian Research Grants Commission to Joseph Forgas is gratefully acknowledged. Requests for reprints should be sent to Joseph P. Forgas. Department of Psychology, Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Otto Behaghel Str. IO, D-6300 Giessen, West Germany.

497 0022-1031/84 $3.00

CopyrIght 0 1984 by Academic Press. Inc. Ail right5 of reproductmn in any form reserved.

498 FORGAS, BOWER. AND KRANTZ

cognitive activities such as memory, inferences, decision making, and associative processes. The outcome of such judgments has important implications not only for our self-esteem and social adjustment (Trower, Bryant, & Argyle, 1978), but ultimately also for our mental health (Beck, 1976; Roth & Rehm, 1980).

Does our mood at the time of making such judgments influence how we interpret and remember our social encounters? Existing work suggests that mood influences not only memory (Bower, 1981; Bower, Monteiro, & Gilligan, 1978) but also a range of other social and cognitive processes (Bower, 1983; Clark & Isen, 1981; Isen & Means, 1983). However, no previous study examined how a person’s mood affects the perception and interpretation of complex, realistic social encounters and the recall of such episodes. Yet affective states are likely to play a particularly important role in thinking about social events; as Zajonc (1980) argued, “affect dominates social interaction, and is the major currency in which social intercourse is transacted” (p. 155).

In this study we sought to extend our earlier work to a new and socially relevant domain, by showing that temporary mood states significantly influence how people interpret and remember their social encounters. In addition, we hoped to clarify some aspects of the associative network model (Bower, 1983; Bower & Cohen, 1982) as it applies to complex social judgments.

Mood and the Interaction Episode

In order to study the effects of mood on interpreting social behaviors, it is first necessary to create a range of realistic but controlled interactions. Most everyday encounters take place within the framework of common, well-defined interaction routines, or social episodes (Forgas, 1979; 1982). Such interaction “frames” (Goffman, 1974) provide one of the most important sources of everyday fluctuations of mood (Forgas, 1982). In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the empirical description and analysis of interaction episodes (Battistich & Thompson, 1980; Forgas, 1976, 1979; Pervin, 1976).

Affective variables were found to play a central role in how episodes are defined and cognitively represented by such widely differing groups as English, Swedish, Australian, and American students, housewives, sports teams, and academic groups (for a review see Forgas, 1979, 1982). As Pervin (1976) notes, “what is striking is the extent to which situations are described in terms of affects . . . and are organised in terms of affects aroused by them” (p. 471).

Four different kinds of episodes, associated with different mood states, were studied in the present investigation. On the basis of past research (Battistich & Thompson, 1980; Forgas, 1979, 1982; Pervin, 1976), the formality and the intimacy of the interactions were manipulated by varying

MOOD AND SOCIAL PERCEPTION 499

the behavior setting, the partner’s behavior, and the content of the interaction. We expected that informal interactions would produce more positive mood states than formal episodes, and that inappropriately intimate (“embarassing”) topics would result in more negative affective reactions than less intimate exchanges.

Mood Effects on Memory

What would our subjects remember of these encounters, and how would they interpret their own, and their partners’ social behaviors as a function of their mood state? Considerable evidence exists for the effects of mood on memory. Material consistent with a mood is easier to remember (Bower et al., 1978; Leight & Ellis, 1981; Natale & Hantas, 1982), leading some researchers to conclude that “the crucial dimension underlying memory is not what the subject knows, or the amount of knowledge used to encode an item, but rather, what the subject feels about what he knows” (Keenan & Bailett, 1979, p. 25).

Looking at memory for events, Bower (1981) reported that people in a positive (or negative) mood recalled more mood-consistent episodes from those recorded in their diaries during the previous week, and were more likely to remember events from their childhood consistent with their current mood. However, no study has yet looked at the effects of mood on memory for details of specific past encounters. We expected that subjects would better recall details of an interaction when their mood state matches the affective tone of the encounter.

The effects of mood on memory may be explained in terms of an associative network model (Bower, 1981), which assumes that mood becomes linked to various events that occurred along with that mood in the past. With nonsocial information the spreading activation effect is usually weak, limited to free recall situations where other retrieval cues are weak or absent. When strong retrieval cues are present, as in recognition tasks, the mood congruence effect disappears (cf. Bower, 1981). We also included a recognition memory task in the present study in order to test the possibility that with highly salient social information as stimuli, the mood congruence effect may be strong enough to influence recognition as well as recall memory.

Mood Effects on the Interpretation of Social Behaviors

There are two ways of interpreting our own and others’ social behaviors: while continuously observing an ongoing social interaction or, retrospectively, relying on memory to recall and evaluate the details of past episodes. We shall look at the influence of mood on both kinds of judgment,. in this study.

Continuous behavior interpretation is an essential part of all social interaction. We intend to demonstrate that a person’s mood state will

500 FORGAS, BOWER, AND KRANTZ

influence how ambiguous and complex social behaviors are construed and interpreted. The network model implies that the “current emotional state of the subject should influence associative processes, the interpretation of ambiguous situations, and the salience of congruent emotional material” (Bower, 1981, p. 138). Earlier evidence suggests that nonsocial tasks requiring free association or the interpretation of ambiguous TAT pictures were indeed influenced by the subjects’ mood state (Bower, 1981, 1983). To the extent that the perception of social behaviors is also a selective, constructive, and interpretive process (Heider, 1958; Tajfel & Forgas, I981), mood-induced biases should also operate in judgments of everyday social interactions.

A person’s biographical experiences and cultural conditioning are likely to result in positive emotions becoming associated with socially desirable, reinforcing trait categories (e.g., friendly, warm, kind), and negative emotions being linked to undesirable trait categories (withdrawn, unfriendly, cold, etc.). Mood preferentially activates such categories, making them more likely to dominate the interpretation of observed interactions. Since social behaviors are often ambiguous, a given action may thus be judged as self-confident or conceited, assertive or aggressive, courageous or reckless, skilled or unskilled, depending on the availability of different interpretive categories primed into readiness by the subject’s prevailing mood. We expected that subjects experiencing a positive mood would perceive more positive, and those experiencing a negative mood more negative behaviors both in their own and in others’ interactive performances.

Apart from continuous behavior interpretation, we often carry out retrospective global assessments of our social encounters. In such cases, we must rely on our recall of what happened in a particular episode. This m@erial may also be subject to mood-dependent recall biases, in addition to the interpretive biases discussed above (Bower, 1983). We expected that global behavior assessments, just like continuous behavior interpretation, would be more positive when the subject feels good, and more negative when the subject is in a sad mood. We also hypothesized an interaction between the affective tone of the original episodes and the subjects’ mood at the time judgments are made. Due to selective recall, relaxed (informal, nonintimate) episodes should be judged relatively more favorably than stressful episodes in a good mood, and the opposite should occur when judging stressful episodes in a bad mood.

Self-Other Differences

How would happy or sad mood influence the way we assess ourselves relative to others? Most clinical research suggests that it is primarily self-relevant information that is distorted by depressed clients; judgments of others are much less affected (Hoehn-Hyde, Schlottmann, & Rush,


1982; Garber & Hollon, 1980). We also expected that mood would have a different impact on judgments of self than others. There are several reasons for predicting such differences. First, people have a richer in- ferential base for judging themselves than others, which selectively fa- cilitates mood-consistent associations when the self is observed. Second, mood induction (and indeed, many real-life moods) involve the reex- periencing our own past emotions, leading to the preferential priming of self-relevant rather than other-relevant categories. To the extent that sad moods tend to be more self-directed than happy moods, these processes should mainly bias toward negative assessments of self when in a bad mood. Finally, cultural rules inhibiting the critical assessment of strangers, as our subjects were to each other, may also contribute to more negative evaluations of the self than others.

In summary, the present experiment examined the effects of people’s mood on their interpretation of their own and others’ social behaviors, and their memory for past interactions. We expected that (a) mood will significantly bias, albeit to an unequal degree, the interpretation of both the subject’s own, and other’s interactive behaviors and (b) details of interactions congruent with the current mood would be better remembered than details of incongruent encounters.

Overview

METHOD

Subjects were run in same-sex pairs. The experiment was conducted on two consecutive days for each pair. On the first day, subjects were videotaped while interacting in four different social episodes: on the second day their recall memory, recognition, and evaluation of their videotaped behavior was assessed in one of two mood states: a positive, happy or negative, depressed mood. There were thus two between-subjects factors (subject sex.

and happy vs depressed mood), and three within-subjects factors (target of judgment- self vs partner, formal vs informal. and intimate vs nonintimate interaction episodes).

Subjects Subjects were 24 undergraduate students at Stanford University who participated in the

experiment either for money or for course credit. All subjects had previously undergone a group screening procedure for hypnotic susceptibility based on the Harvard Group Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, and had been selected to be highly susceptible. Equal numbers of males and females were used. Subjects were randomly assigned to the two mood conditions, and were unacquainted with each other prior to the experiment.

Manipulation of the Interaction Episodes The experimental situation was presented as an interview, with pairs of subjects interacting

with two carefully trained female interviewers. The interview format was chosen since it is a common and inconspicuous occasion which nevertheless allows the unobtrusvie manipulation of a range of episodic features. The four interaction episodes studied here were varied so as to incorporate the factorial combination of formal-informal and intimate- nonintimate features.


Episode formality was manipulated in terms of the behavior setting (a comfortable lounge vs a stark experimental room), the interviewer’s status (introduced as a fellow student or a research staff member), her dress (casual jeans vs formal business suit) and her interaction style (easygoing, chatty with lots of smiles, laughter, and nonverbal reinforcement vs serious, businesslike style with no smile, laughter, or any other verbal or nonverbal immediacy signals). The two interviewers were carefully trained until they were convincing and confident in performing these roles.

The intimacy of the interaction was varied through the kind of questions asked of the subjects. In the nonintimate condition, questions pertained to superficial topics such as attitudes toward sports, the appearance of the campus, TV programs. smoking, or jogging. In the intimate condition, subjects were asked highly intimate and personal questions about their relations with their parents, their view of themselves, their sexual relationships, their childhood, etc. Each subject received both types of questions from both interviewers.

Procedure on Day I

After arrival, pairs of subjects were met by one of the two interviewers (formal vs informal styles). Subjects were told that the study was concerned with the pilot testing of an interview about student life, and that two consecutive interviewers would ask them some questions. Each pair was then taken into one of two experimental rooms (formal vs an informal setting). Before beginning with the interview, subjects were informed that the interview would be videotaped, and their consent was sought and obtained in each case. The next few minutes were spent by the interviewer establishing rapport with the subjects. The interviewer then alternated in asking a total of three intimate and three nonintimate questions from each of the two subjects. During the whole procedure the two subjects were videotaped using a camera unobtrusively located behind a screen. After the conclusion of the first interview, subject pairs were shown into a second interviewing room where the second interviewer (switch of formal vs informal conditions) repeated the procedure. The order of both the formality and the intimacy manipulations was randomized. and each interviewer performed an equal number of formal and informal interviews.

Procedure on Day 2 Subjects were run in the same pairs as on Day 1, but by a different experimenter. After

arrival, they were led to a soundproofed room equipped with a video monitor, and seated in two comLortab1e armchairs in a side-by-side position, in order to minimize direct eye contact and interaction between them. They were told that the study was concerned with the way they think about social events, such as the interview on the previous day, while under hypnosis. Specific instructions were given on how to score the interactive behaviors to be presented on the videotape (see below). After a few minutes spent in establishing rapport, a standardized hypnotic induction procedure (cf. Bower, 1983) was used to get subjects into a hypnotic state.

After a hypnotic state was established, subjects were asked to enter a positive or a negative mood by recalling to themselves a specific experience from the past in which they either (a) felt unhappy, depressed, disappointed, let down, unsuccessful, and rejected by others or (b) felt happy, successful, liked, and accepted by others. The same mood was induced within each subject pair. Once the appropriate mood was accessed, subjects were instructed to stabilize its intensity so as to experience a strong, but not overwhelming emotion. All subjects but two, later replaced, were able to do this, and their mood state was strong and endured throughout the session, as reported by them during debriefing at the end of the experiment.

Following the establishment of the appropriate mood state, subjects’ free recall and recognition of the previous day’s interview questions were assessed (see below). This was followed by a 5 min reinduction period, in order to prevent the dissipation of the established


mood state. Next, subjects viewed the videotape of the interview during the previous day, and scored their own and their partner’s behaviors in accordance with the scoring scheme described below. Finally, subjects provided global judgments about the interaction. After the completion of these experimental tasks, subjects in the “negative” mood condition were switched to a happy mood, and the hypnotic state was terminated for all subjects. The whole session lasted a total of about 20-25 min. followed by a debriefing period of about lo-15 min.

Dependent Variables

During the session on Day 2 while experiencing a happy or sad mood, subjects provided data about four categories of dependent variables: (a) continuous behavior interpretation, (b) global behavior assessment, (c) free recall, and (d) recognition memory for the interaction.

Continuous behavior interpretation. Subjects were instructed to watch the videotape of themselves and their partner being interviewed the day before. and to record observed positive or negative behaviors performed either by themselves or their partners. They were asked to make at least one tally mark in any one of these four categories every 5 s. The 5-s intervals were signaled by the experimenter tapping a nencil on the table.

Positive and negative behaviors were defined as “any behavior, act or communication, including both verbal and non-verbal cues, which indicates interest, positive behavior. poise and social skills, or the opposite, lack of skill and poise.” The definition was left intentionally broad (cf. the very specific behavior definitions used, for example, by Roth & Rehm, 1980) in order to allow subjects greater freedom to pay attention to every aspect of their performances in these more complex and realistic episodes. Specific examples of positive behaviors (e.g. looking, smiling. nodding. sitting comfortably, showing interest, talking confidently) and negative behaviors (lack of gaze, stiff posture, nervous movements, speech disturbances, etc.) were given as illustrations, until all subjects felt confident about scoring their own and their partners’ behaviors. All subjects mastered this technique within a few minutes. The above instructions for scoring were given before the mood induction procedure commenced.

Globn/ hehuvior assrssrnent scales. At the conclusion of the behavior interpretation task, while still in the appropriate mood state, subjects were asked to rate their own as well as their partner’s overall interview behavior on each of three 7-point bipolar scales (being comfortable. being relaxed, and being interested), and for each of the four episodes. A high score indicated that the target was rated as comfortable, relaxed. and interested in the interaction.

Objective raters. In addition to these data, two objective raters who were trained to achieve an interrater correlation better than .80 also viewed the videotapes; for each subject pair they provided 5-s behavior interpretation records as well as global behavior assessments using procedures identical to those described above.

Free-recull measure. Subjects were asked to write down as many of the total of 24 interview questions asked of them and their partner as they could remember. They were given 8 min to complete this task, which was more than sufficient in all cases.

Recognition measure. Subjects were also asked to decide for each of 36 questions on a list (24 originally asked in the interview. and 12 distractor items), whether (a) each question had been part of the interview or not and (b) if it was an interview question, whether it was asked of them or their partner. Subjects received a score of 1 for each item correctly recognized, and a score of .5 for items which were correctly recognized as part of the interview, but incorrectly categorized as being asked of self or partner.

Debriefing and Check for Demand Characteristics Following the termination of the hypnotic state on the second session, all subjects were

carefully interviewed for any ill effects. and to assess their interpretation and understanding


of the experimental procedure. No subject reported any awareness of the experimental hypotheses. None of the subjects reported negative aftereffects, including those in the negative mood condition. Despite careful questioning. no evidence was found that responses were affected by demand characteristics communicated through the mood induction procedure.

RESULTS

The results were analyzed using a series of planned contrast analyses of variance. In accordance with our hypotheses, contrasts tested the effects of the subjects’ sex, mood (good vs bad), the target (self vs partner), and the type of interaction episode (formality and intimacy) on behavior interpretation and memory for the interaction. Since no significant sex differences were found, this variable was eliminated from further analyses. In all tests the subject pair was used as the unit of analysis.

Mood Effects on Continuous Behavior interpretation

The behavior interpretation data consisted of the number of positive and negative acts identified by the subjects for themselves and their partners in each mood state and in each of four episodes. Because there were slight differences between subjects in the total number of observations recorded, individual scores were normalized so that all positive plus negative acts recorded for self and partner equaled 100. Positive and negative behavior scores were treated as a further within-subjects factor in this analysis. Results showed the predicted significant interaction between subjects’ mood and their assessment of positive and negative behaviors. Overall, more positive and fewer negative acts were identified in past interactions by subjects who felt happy, and the opposite was the case by depressed subjects (F(1, 11) = 26.51, p < .Ol). This pattern, including cell means, is shown in Fig. 1. The differences strongly support our hypotheses and can be reliably attributed to mood-induced judgmental biases, since independent ratings by two objective observers revealed

SELF-RATINGS

GOOD MOOD

BAD MOOD

“, x3- 0 a

15 ’

NEGATIVE POSITIVE

PARTNER-RATINGS

I 07 35

5 F 2 30 GOOD MOOD 0

L 2 0 25

5 E “w 20 BAD MOOD a

NEGATIVE POSITIVE

FIG. 1. The effects of good and bad mood on the percentage of positive and negative acts identified in the social behavior of self and partner.

MOOD AND SOClAL PERCEPTION 505

no real behavioral differences between subjects assigned to the two mood conditions (F(1, 11) = ,037, NS).

Self-Partner Differences in Behavior Interpretation

As Fig. 1 clearly shows, subjects interpreted their own behavior dif- ferently from their partner’s behavior when experiencing a negative mood. We found a significant three-way interaction of mood with self-partner ratings and positive/negative behavior scores (F(1, If) = 6.45, p < .0.5). Subjects in a good mood perceived more socially skilled, positive and less unskilled, negative acts in both their own and their partner’s performances. In contrast, subjects in a depressed mood identified far more negative acts in their own than in their partner’s behavior.

This finding is consistent with clinical research suggesting the pre- dominance of self-referent biases in depression (Hoehn-Hyde et al., 1982; Garber & Hollon, 1980). However, we also predicted that mood should have a clear influence on both judgments of self and others. To directly test this hypothesis we compared subjects’ ratings of themselves and their partners with ratings of the same targets by neutral observers. As expected, subjects in a sad mood identified more negative behaviors than did objective observers not only in themselves (x = 37.5 vs 19.7; F(l, 11) = 34.22, p < .Ol), but also in their partners (x = 22.3 vs 19.2; 1c(l, 11) = 6.87, p < .05). These results are consistent with the notion that negative mood preferentially primes self-relevant categories, while positive mood results in a comparable activation of self- and other-related categories. The data thus support our prediction that mood will influence both judgments of self and others, with sad mood leading to more negative assessment of the the self than the partner.

Episodic Differences in Behavior Interpretation

Our manipulation of the formality and the intimacy of the interaction episodes proved highly successful, as shown in Fig. 2. Irrespective of their mood, subjects identified more positive and fewer negative acts in informal rather than formal settings (F(1, 11) = 10.46, p < .Ol) and in nonintimate, relaxed rather than intimate, stressful episodes (F(l) 11) = 13.42, p < .Ol). Objective raters (Fig. 2) found the same pattern as subjects themselves, seeing more positive and fewer negative acts in informal as opposed to formal (F(I) 11) = 16.78, p < .01) and in relaxed, nonintimate as opposed to intimate, stressful interactions (F(1, 11) = 44.12, p < .Ol). As expected, the additive effects of intimacy and formality (highly intimate questions asked by a formal interviewer) resulted in the most unpleasant and difficult episodes (Fig. 2).

As Fig. 2 indicates, there was no interaction between mood. episode characteristics, and the perception of positive vs negative behaviors (F( 1, 11) = 1.34, NS). This pattern suggests that although the nature of the


B 0

“O 2-

f-------6B;&

8’ RATINGS

8 /’

2 8’

2

A /’ 0

m

_ .,.............. YLrrc ._........ ;A.! .,.........................

‘..\ /’

z ‘\ ,

I’

; -2

‘.A’

l +---h <

z -4-

BAD MOOD

:

8

2 -6-

%

v 0

-6 I

Formal Formal lnfoimal lniormal

Nonlntmate l”tU7late No”,“lm7aie lntimafe

TYPE OF INTERACTlON EPISODE

FIG. 2. The effects of the formality and intimacy of the interaction episode on behavior interpretation by subjects in good and bad mood, and by objective raters.

episode significantly influenced the actual frequency of positive and negative behaviors, mood biases affected judgments the same way across the four episodes. The finding of almost identical mood effects in four quite different episodes suggests the cross-situational generality of our results.

Global Behavior Assessments

Apart from the continuous behavior monitoring task while watching the videotape, subjects were also asked to rate their own and their partner’s behavior retrospectively on three bipolar scales, and in each of the four episode contexts. There were no self-partner differences on these global measures. Result showed that global judgments (on 7-point scales) were significantly more positive when made in a good mood than in a bad mood (X = 3.87 vs 3.53; F(1, 11) = 5.01, p < .05). lnformal episodes were rated more positively than formal episodes (x = 3.91 vs 3.49, F(1, 11) = 6.45, p < .05), and nonintimate episodes were judged more positively than overintimate episodes (J? = 4.02 vs 3.38, F(1, 11) = 12.31, p < .Ol). These results are generally consistent with our previous findings, showing that mood may bias not only the continous monitoring, but also the retrospective recall and evaluation of social behaviors.


In addition, global judgments were also influenced by the hypothesized interaction between current mood and the formality of the episode (F( 1, 11) = 6.71, p < .05). In a happy mood, subjects’ global evaluations were much more positive of easy, informal than of difficult, formal episodes (x = 4.22 vs 3.31). There were no such differences in global ratings in a sad mood (3.70 vs 3.62).

Memory for the Interaction

The previous results as well as the mood-dependent retrieval found in other free-recall studies (Bower, 1981, 1983; Leight & Ellis, 1981) suggest that people may remember more about difficult and stressful (formal, intimate) episodes while in a bad mood, but more about easy, happy episodes (informal, nonintimate) while in a good mood. Of the rich array of information which might be recalled, we focused on the single most important element of the interactions studied here: the interview questions asked.

Subjects remembered more of the 12 questions asked of themselves than the 12 questions asked of their partners (A? = 5.29 vs 4.41, F(1, 1 I) = 7.69, p < .Ol). Intimate questions were recalled better than nonintimate questions (F(1, 11) = 13.85, p < .Ol), particularly when questions were asked of the self, as indicated by a target (self-other) x intimacy interaction (F(1) 11) = 7.83, p < .025). Subjects recalled more of the six intimate (2.96) as against nonintimate (2.33) questions asked of them, while there were no differences in remembering the partner’s questions (2.24 vs 2.17). These results support earlier findings that self-referent information is recalled better than neutral information, and that more “involving” material is remembered better than less involving items (Keenan & Baillett, 1979).

One of the more interesting aspects of the data is the predicted interaction between the recaller’s mood and the formality of the interaction (F(1, 11) = 12.31, p < .Ol). Subjects remembered more about an easy, informal episode while in a good mood, and a difficult, formal episode while in a bad mood (Fig. 3). To the extent that the manipulation of the episodes’ formality resulted in interactions of varying difficulty and corresponding mood differences, our findings support the mood-dependent retrieval hypothesis.

Recognition Memory

The results indicate that subjects showed better recognition memory (measured in number of items correctly recognized) for questions asked of themselves than of their partners (J? = 8.91 vs 7.20, F(1, 11) = 15.66, p < .Ol); better memory for questions asked in informal rather than formal episodes (J? = 8.34 vs 7.84; F(1, 11) = 5.41, p < .05); and better


1.7’

1.6 -

1.5 -

F < 14- n -I 1.3-

s s 12-

= VI-

2 g l.O-

.s -

.8 t

Formal Episode Informal Episode

EPISODE FORMALITY

FIG. 3. The interaction between episode formality and mood state on the recall of interview questions (mean number of questions recalled out of three within each episode).

memory for intimate rather than nonintimate questions (8.60 vs 7.58; F(1, 11) = 5.74, p < .0.5). However, there were no significant mood effects on recognition. The first set of findings are generally consistent with prior research, indicating superior memory for self-referent and involving information. The failure to find a retrieval mood effect on recognition is also consistent with prior work (cf. Bower, 1981). It seems that the more powerful retrieval cues available in a recognition task are likely to overshadow the weaker mood-priming effects, even when the material consists of highly salient social information, as in the present case.

DlSCUSSlON

Remembering and interpreting our own and others’ social performances presents us with a demanding and difficult cognitive task. Our results show that both the evaluation and the recall of interactive behaviors is significantly influenced by a person’s mood at the time the judgments are made.

Mood Effects on Behavior Interpretation

Social behavior in a realistic encounter offers a rich and complex stimulus array. Even simple and directly observable social acts are open to numerous alternative interpretations. Our results suggest that a relatively minor activation of interpretive categories due to a transient mood may be sufficient to significantly bias behavior assessments. The procedure used here provided a rigorous test of mood effects on behavior interpretation. In watching a videorecording subjects were exposed to a more objective and unbiased record of their behaviors than is commonly available


to people in everyday life. It may well be that in inherently more ambiguous real-life situations mood-induced biases on behavior interpretation would be even greater than found here.

We propose two alternative mechanisms to explain mood effects on such judgments. The first mechanism assumes that evaluative trait labels are categories that can be activated or primed into readiness by mood states to interpret ambiguous social behaviors. Because the meaning of interactive behaviors is rarely “given” but must be inferred (Heider, 1958), the “emotional premise from which we begin strongly influences what we perceive . . . The phenomenon is understandable within the semantic network theory. The current mood activates and primes mood- congruent categories into readiness, and these are used in expectation- driven, or top-down processing to classify and assimilate indeterminate experiences” (Bower, 1981, p. 140). For example, the same facial expres- sion may be classified by a happy viewer as a “friendly smile,” and by a hostile or depressed viewer as a “condescending smirk.” The viewers differ in the relative activation of their “smile” vs “smirk” categories according to their mood. Similar priming mechanisms for trait categories were proposed by Wyer & Srull (1981) and others.

An alternative mechanism to explain mood effects assumes that objects, behaviors, and events are categorized by rules formulated as condition- action productions (Bower & Cohen, 1982). Once a given condition occurs, the matching production is fired, assigning a specific interpretation to the behavior observed. For social actions, Bower and Cohen (1982) suggested that conditions include not only features of the communicating person (e.g., facial configuration), but also the thematic context of the social setting such as its formality, restrictiveness, or friendliness (cf. Forgas, 1982). Such a production rule might be that “if the lips are curled up and the context is hostile, infer this is a smirk, and react with anger.” The same behavior in a friendly context might be interpreted as a “smile” leading to a happy emotional reaction.

The viewer’s emotional state may enter into the categorization process in two ways. First, the mood could increase the likelihood that the ongoing situation will be thematically categorized as hostile or friendly, thus providing a continuing cue to trigger classifying productions appropriate to that theme. Secondly, the process may work in the reverse, by preferentially enhancing (by spreading activation) the selection of those productions which have the current emotion as their outcome. The general principle is that whichever information source (external situation or internal state) is less clearly specified, the prevailing mood will “drive” the interpretation of this more ambiguous information category. Either of these two mechanisms may give rise to the mood-congruent assessments of ongoing social behaviors we found here.


Self-Other Differences

The processes described above may explain why people in a depressed mood might generally see more negative, and people in a happy mood will see more positive behaviors than do neutral observers. However, we also found that sad mood precipitated more negative self-ratings than partner ratings. We have several possible explanations for such an effect. Sad moods are more likely to have been associated in the past with self- referent categories then happy moods. Our mood manipulation capitalized on the subjects’ own past experiences, and was thus likely to have selectively activated more negative self-relevant than other-relevant judgmental categories. The greater availability of self-referent inference rules probably also contributed to the self-other difference found here.

In addition, the influence of cultural norms was probably also a factor in the self-other differences we found. A relevant norm is the convention of politeness prohibiting the explicitly negative evaluation of strangers. Our subjects were unacquainted with each other, but knew that their partners came from the same positively valued subculture, Stanford students. Under these circumstances conventions of group solidarity and politeness are likely to selectively inhibit negative judgments of others, without affecting self-judgments. This is exactly the pattern we have found. This account also suggests that purely cognitive theories of social perception may only go part of the way toward explaining how everyday judgments are made. A consideration of normative and cultural rules is essential if social judgments in realistic situations are to be approximated (Forgas, 1983; Tajfel & Forgas, 1981). The recent incorporation of such interaction rules into network models represents an important step in that direction (cf. Bower & Cohen, 1982).

Global Assessments

Mood also influenced the retrospective evaluation of past encounters. “Happy” subjects judged both their own and their partner’s interactions more positively than subjects who felt sad. This parallels the pattern we found with continuous behavior assessments, and may be explained through identical mechanisms. Unlike the behavior monitoring task, however, global assessments also requires subjects to recall the details of a past interaction. In addition to interpretive biases, happy subjects may have simply recalled more positive details of a pleasant than an unpleasant encounter. This notion is consistent with mood-dependent retrieval found in memory research (Bower, 1981, 1983). Since in this task the evaluative trait categories were already given (e.g., ratings of being comfortable), and instead of specific behaviors only global feelings were rated, self- other differences were neither expected nor found.


Clinical Implications

Our results also have considerable clinical relevance. The findings confirm that normal subjects can, in an appropriate mood, process information in a “depressogenic” style (Beck, 1976), selectively focusing on information consistent with their mood state (Natale & Hantas, 1982). While cognitive distortions in depressed subjects may be due to several possible factors apart from mood, the evidence collected here suggests a specific link between mood and cognitive distortions. Since our subjects were normal college students, the distortions in their memory and associative processes brought about by mood provide more direct evidence for emotional effects on cognition than is possible in studies using depressive patients as subjects.

Mood Influences on Memory

The recall results support earlier findings of mood-dependent retrieval. Happy subjects recalled more of their friendly, relaxed interactions, and subjects who felt sad recalled more from the unpleasant, tense interviews. Making the reasonable assumption that subjects indeed felt happier during the informal, nonintimate interactions than during the formal, overintimate encounters, these recall effects are consistent with the spreading activation model. Congruent mood during the interactions and during recall on the next day selectively facilitated recall. The effect is similar to that obtained in studies reporting mood-dependent retrieval of emotional incidents from a person’s recent life (cf. Bower, 1981; Natale & Hantas, 1982).

The Hypnotic Procedure

A few words are in order about our hypnotic mood induction procedure. This technique appears to be a powerful method for experimental manipulations of mood, with some advantages over other techniques. The mood states generated are both more intensive and more enduring, and a wider variety of moods can be studied than is possible with other methods. A frequent complaint against the use of hypnotic induction points to the possibility of demand characteristics. We took several precautions in this regard. Particular care was taken to eliminate any similarities in the mood induction text and the experimental task to be judged. Once a mood state was accessed, subjects were asked to concentrate the emotional experience, and exclude details of the original setting and context from their consciousness. Judgments began only after a clear and general mood experience was reported by subjects. Further, each subject received only one mood manipulation to minimize the danger of mood-related demands becoming salient. Finally, after debriefing every subject was extensively interviewed. We found no evidence of any aware-


ness of demand characteristics. We would urge that similar precautions should be followed in other studies using this method.

Episodic Differences

Social encounters nearly always take place within the framework of culturally established and socially sanctioned interaction “scripts” (Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979; Forgas, 1979). Such interaction routines not only have significant consequences for comprehension and memory, but may also influence the participants’ behavior as well as mood state. Both neutral observers and the subjects themselves found identical, and significant behavioral differences across the four episodes we looked at (Fig. 2). Moreover, mood influenced behavior assessments in a similar way across the four episodes, suggesting the cross-situational generality of these biases.

It seems that manipulations of episode formality (setting, interviewer’s status, dress, interaction style, etc.) had a greater effect on subjects’ mood and subsequent recall (Fig. 3) than did question intimacy. Perhaps it is easier to associate a mood state with concrete external features of the interaction and the interviewer (formality) than with the intimacy of interview questions. The way these various classes of contextual variables modulate our mood states is a question of increasing importance in social psychology (Forgas, 1983) which is also at the heart of recent “mood appraisal” models (Bower & Cohen, 1982).

REFERENCES

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitilae fherupy und the emotional disorders. New York: Jnternational Univ. Press, 1976.

Battistich, V. A.. & Thompson, E. G. (1980). Students’ perceptions of the college milieu. Personulity urzd Social Psychology Bulletin. 6, 74-82.

Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist. 36, 129-148. Bower. G. H. (1983). Affect and cognition. Philosophical Transactions nffhe Royal Society.

London 302(B). 387-402. Bower, G. H., Black, J. B.. & Turner, T. J. (1979).. Scripts in memory for text. Cogniti\v

Psychology, 11, 177-220. 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: The 17th unnual Carnegie symposium on cognition. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Bower, G. H., Monteiro, K. P.. & Gilligan, S. G. (1978). Emotional mood as a context for learning and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 17, 573- 585.

Clark. M. S.. & Isen, A. M. (1981). Towards understanding the relationship between feeling states and social behavior. In A. Hastorf, & A. M. Isen. (Eds.). Cognitive social psychology. New York: Elsevier.

De Monbreun, B. G., & Craighead. W. E. (1977). Distortion of perception and recall of feedback in depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 4, 31 l-329.

Forgas, J. P. (1976). The perception of social episodes: Categorical and dimensional representations in two different social milieus. Journul qfPersonu/i~ and Social Psycho/ogy. 33, 199-209.


Forgas, J. P. (1979). So&d episode.c: The strtdy of interucfion routines. New York/London: Academic Press.

Forgas, J. P. (1981). Affective and emotional influences on episode representations. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Social cognition: Perspecfitjes on e~~e~du.v ~rndrrstunding. New York/London: Academic Press.

Forgas. J. P. (1982). Episode cognition: Internal representations of interaction routines. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Adranccs in e.r~erir~rentu/ sock/ p.~ycho/og~. New York/London: Academic Press.

Forgas, J. P. (1983). What is social about social cognition’? Brirish Jortrnul of Sock/ P.Yycllo/ogy. 22, I29- 144.

Garber, J., & Hollon. S. D. (1980). Universal versus personal helplessness in depression: Belief in uncontrollability or incompetence’? Jorr,-net/ I$ Ahnormol Psyc~ho/o,gy. 89, 56-66.

Goffman. E. ( 1974). Fvcrme unu!\sis. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Heider. F. t 1958). The psycho/ogy of interpersontrl relations. New York: Wiley. Hoehn-Hyde. D., Schlottmann. R. S.. & Rush, A. J. (1982). Perceptions of social interactions

in depressed psychiatric patients. Jolrrncr/ c$Con.srr/ting and Clinicul Psychology, 50, 209-212.

Isen. A. M.. & Means, B. (1983). The influence of positive affect on decision-making strategy. Sociul Cogniriorf, in press.

Keenan. J. M., & Bailett. S. D. (1979). Memory for personally and socially significant events. In R. S. Nickerson (Ed. I, Attention und perfomtrnce. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Leight. K. A., & Ellis, H. C. (1981). Emotional mood states and state-dependency in memory. Joumol of’ Verhul Leurning und Vrrhul Behuvior. 10, 251-266.

Lloyd, G. G., & Lishman, W. A. (1975). Effect of depression on the speed of recall of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Psychologicul Medicine. 5, 173-180.

Natale, M. & Hantas, M. (1982). Effect of temporary mood states on selective memory about the self. Journul of Persontrlir?: trnd Sock/ Ps~cho/o,q~. 42. 927-934.

Pervin. L. A. (1976). A free-response description approach to the study of person-situation interaction. Journul of Personuliry and So&/ Ps~cl~olo~~. 34, 465-474.

Roth, D., & Rehm, L. P. (1980). Relationship between self-monitoring processes, memory and depression. Cognititv Therupy und Reseurch, 4, 149-157.

Tajfel, H.. & Forgas. J. P. (1981). Social categorisation: cognitions. values and groups, In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Sock/ cognition. New York/London: Acdemic Press,

Trower, P., Bryant. B.. & Argyle, M. t 1978). Socicrl skills und tnenful heulth. London: Methuen.

Wener. A. E.. & Rehm, L. P. (197.5). Depressive affect: A test of behavioral hypotheses. Journul of Ahnorrnal Behuviour. 84, 221-217.

Wyer, R., & Srull. T. K. (1981). Category accessibility. In E. T. Higgins. C. P. Herman, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Sock/ cognition: The 0nturio syn~posium. Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum.

Zajonc. R. B. t 19801. Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. Americun Psychologist. 35. I5 I- 175.

Documents

The Influence of Mood on Perceptions of Social …stanford.edu/~gbower/1984/influence_mood_perceptions.pdfThe Influence of Mood on Perceptions of Social Interactions ... (Bower, 1983;