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Despite decades of research demonstrating a dedicated link between positive and negative affect and specific cognitive processes, not all research is consistent with this view. We present a new overarching theoretical account as an alternative-one that can simultaneously account for prior findings, generate new predictions, and encompass a wide range of phenomena. According to our proposed affect-as-cognitive-feedback account, affective reactions confer value on accessible information processing strategies (e.g., global vs. local processing) and other responses, goals, concepts, and thoughts that happen to be accessible at the time. This view underscores that the relationship between affect and cognition is not fixed but, instead, is highly malleable. That is, the relationship between affect and cognitive processing can be altered, and often reversed, by varying the mental context in which it is experienced. We present evidence that supports this account, along with implications for specific affective states and other subjective experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Three experiments investigated the effects of participants' mood during exposure to target information on delayed judgments of the target. Participants were exposed to a mood induction immediately before they acquired information about a political candidate and then reported their evaluation of the candidate at a later time. Effects of mood on judgment were moderated by 2 individual-differences measures that can be interpreted in terms of processing efficiency. These were political expertise and total recall for the candidate information, with higher scores on these indices interpreted as reflecting more efficient processing. Among low-expertise (or low-recall) perceivers, mood produced an assimilation effect on evaluative judgments. Among high-expertise (or high-recall) perceivers, mood produced a contrast effect on judgments. When pooling across these individual differences, mood exerted no influence on judgments. These findings are consistent with an on-line model of mood misattribution and overcorrection.

This article examines the relationship between gender, hostile sexism, benevolent sexism and reactions to a seemingly innocuous genre of sexist humor, the dumb blonde joke. After hearing an audiotaped conversation in which two students swapped dumb blonde jokes, participants high in hostile sexism rated the jokes as more amusing and less offensive than those low in hostile sexism. Among individuals low in hostile sexism, however, benevolent sexism interacted with gender. Specifically, men high in benevolent sexism found the jokes significantly more amusing and less offensive than either women in the same group or men low in both hostile and benevolent sexism. This study replicates and extends previous research examining the relationship between hostile sexism and the enjoyment of sexist humor, and underscores the possibility that benevolent sexism may represent qualitatively distinct attitudes for men and women.The fifties blonde was sold as a sex kitten, but Marilyn Monroe's perfected dumb act is more childlike than animal. The Patron Saint of peroxide is the one who set up a new stereotype for blondes, a combination of innocence and knowing sensuality, the pale golden hair of a child . . . in glaring contrast to the voluptuous curves of a grown woman, the lisping baby voice in opposition to the seductive behaviour.

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