The results suggest that perceived and actual preparedness are related but not entirely equivalent, which emphasizes the importance of differentiating the two constructs. Limitations of the current study and recommendations for future research are provided.

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Over the past three decades research has overwhelmingly supported the notion that positive affect promotes global, abstract, heuristic information processing whereas negative affect promotes local, detailed, and systematic processing. Yet despite the weight of the evidence, recent work suggests that such a direct relationship may be highly tenuous. In line with the affect-as-information account, we maintain that affective cues are adaptive and serve to provide individuals with information about their current psychological environment. We argue that these cues do not directly produce specific processing styles, but instead confer value on whatever processing inclination is dominant at the time. Positive affect (e.g., happiness) tends to promote reliance on currently dominant processing inclinations, whereas negative affect (e.g., sadness) tends to inhibit such reliance. Thus the impact of affect on processing is highly malleable and depends on both the type of processing that is currently active and the information provided by affective cues.

Two experiments investigated the impact of affect on the working self-concept. Following an affect induction, participants completed the twenty statements test (TST) to assess their working self-concepts. Participants in predominantly happy and angry states used more abstract statements to describe themselves than did participants in predominantly sad and fearful states. Evaluations of the statements that participants generated (Experiment 2) demonstrate that these effects are not the result of (1) participants describing positively and negatively valenced information at different levels of abstraction, or (2) valence-based affective priming. Further, half of the participants in Experiment 2 were led to attribute their affect to the manipulation prior to completing the TST. This manipulation eliminated the influence of affect on the working self-concept. Taken together, these results are consistent with theory and research on the informative functions of affect.

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