Affect moderates self-gratification and altruism.

Abstract

Children reminisced on matters that made them happy or sad. Subsequently, they were permitted to indulge themselves noncontingently with candies and to contribute money to other children, both in the absence of an experimenter. Both happy and sad children self-gratified more than the control group, but happy children contributed more than either the controls or unhappy ones. Among happy children, a strong positive correlation was obtained between self-gratification and altruism. Among unhappy children, that correlation was negative. Affect, therefore, moderates the relationship between self-gratification and altruism. Implications for a theory of altruism are discussed.

The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?

“…Some studies are able to address this question directly, as they include both positive affect and negative affect as variables or manipulations. For example, in the helping literature, experimental inductions of positive affect produce increased prosocial behavior, whereas inductions of negative affect do not necessarily decrease helping (e.g., Aderman, 1972;Berkowitz, 1987;Isen & Levin, 1972;Rosenhan et al, 1974). Regarding social interactions (e.g., Cunningham, 1988aCunningham, , 1988b, creativity (e.g., Hirt et al, 1996;Richards, 1994), and evaluations of strangers (e.g., Baron, 1987Baron, , 1993, it appears that positive mood inductions do not produce symmetrical effects.…”

“…Both the inductions of positive mood and the assessments of helping have taken numerous forms in these studies. For example, happy moods, in comparison with sad or neutral moods, have promoted such behaviors as contributing money to charity (Cunningham, Steinberg, & Grev, 1980;Isen, 1970) or to needy children (Rosenhan, Underwood, & Moore, 1974), donating blood (O'Malley & Andrews, 1983), and volunteering for an extra experiment (Aderman, 1972;Baron & Bronfen, 1994;Baron et al, 1992;Berkowitz, 1987;Isen & Levin, 1972;Rosenhan, Salovey, & Hargis, 1981).…”

“…Regarding social interactions (e.g., Cunningham, 1988aCunningham, , 1988b, creativity (e.g., Hirt et al, 1996;Richards, 1994), and evaluations of strangers (e.g., Baron, 1987Baron, , 1993, it appears that positive mood inductions do not produce symmetrical effects. Experimental laboratory research-for example, on helping, creativity, and task performance-also often includes neutral mood conditions, which do not parallel the effects of happy mood (e.g., Berkowitz, 1987;Cunningham, 1988a;Estrada et al, 1994;Isen, 1970Isen, , 1993Isen et al, 1985;Rosenhan et al, 1974). As another example, some crosssectional and longitudinal studies show significant effects of positive affect, but not negative affect-for example, on mortality risk in the nun study (Danner et al, 2001), on likelihood of developing a cold (Cohen et al, 2003), or on organizational citizenship (Credé et al, 2005).…”

Affect and memory in young children

“…The affect induction procedure for the present experiment was based upon a standard cognitive induction procedure that has been used successfully in a number of studies (e.g., Barden et al, 1981;Barden, Garber, Leiman, Ford, & Masters, 1985;Moore et al, 1973;Rosenhan et al, 1974;Underwood et al, 1973) and has been validated using independent measures of affect (Masters et al, 1979). In this procedure, children generate a thought of a particular affective valence and then dwell upon it for a brief period of time (typically, 30 seconds).…”

“…Of particular note has been the study of children's mood states and their effects on various patterns of social behavior. Experimental procedures to induce affective states have been shown to be valid, and children's moods have been demonstrated to influence their social behavior with other children (Barden, Garber, Duncan, & Masters, 1981;Harris & Siebel, 1975;Rosenhan, Underwood, & Moore, 1974;. The publication of both convergent and discriminant validity data on the induction procedure (Masters, Barden, & Ford, 1979;Teasdale & Taylor, 1981) has encouraged the utilization of experimentally induced affective states to explore the influence of emotion on learning (Masters et al, 1979) and other cognitive processes under carefully controlled experimental conditions.…”