Better Mood and Better Performance

Abstract

Theories of mood and its effect on cognitive processing suggest that positive mood may allow for increased cognitive flexibility. This increased flexibility is associated with the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, both of which play crucial roles in hypothesis testing and rule selection. Thus, cognitive tasks that rely on behaviors such as hypothesis testing and rule selection may benefit from positive mood, whereas tasks that do not rely on such behaviors should not be affected by positive mood. We explored this idea within a category-learning framework. Positive, neutral, and negative moods were induced in our subjects, and they learned either a rule-described or a non-rule-described category set. Subjects in the positive-mood condition performed better than subjects in the neutral- or negative-mood conditions in classifying stimuli from rule-described categories. Positive mood also affected the strategy of subjects who classified stimuli from non-rule-described categories.

Positive Affect, Intertemporal Choice, and Levels of Thinking: Increasing Consumers' Willingness to Wait

“…Likewise, in Studies 5 and 6, if people in positive affect were deciding superficially, there should have been only main effects of affect rather than interactions between affect and time horizon. These findings have important implications for understanding the effects of positive affect more generally because they add to the literature showing that positive affect does not impair systematic, careful processing but rather facilitates it (e.g., Erez and Isen 2002;Nadler, Rabi, and Minda 2010;Staw and Barsade 1993). Mischel, Shoda, and Rodriguez (1989) convincingly demonstrate that the ability to delay gratification is associated with success in many spheres of life, even years after the initial observation of delay behavior, and they also show that this ability can be influenced by cognitive and situational interventions.…”

Modulatory effects of happy mood on performance monitoring: Insights from error-related brain potentials

“…Although puzzling, this similar neurophysiological effect found in two opposite mood states could actually reflect different underlying processes or mood-dependent alterations in these two cases. While in the case of depression (and trait negative affect), a reduced Pe is often interpreted as reflecting an inability to timely adapt or change cognitive control functions in response to negative events (or perhaps reflecting impairments to consciously register them, see Frank, D'Lauro, & Curran, 2007;Hajcak, McDonald, & Simons, 2003b;Nieuwenhuis et al, 2001), such an interpretation appears difficult to hold in the case of happy mood and positive emotions given that they usually promote (but not undermine) creativity, flexibility, and perhaps even augment cognitive control in specific circumstances (Fredrickson, 2004;Nadler et al, 2010). Interestingly, our new findings are also compatible with an earlier ERP study showing decreased Pe amplitude with relaxed mood (following a social meal) (Sommer, Stürmer, Shmuilovich, Martin-Loeches, & Schacht, 2013), suggesting that a reduced Pe with positive affect (conceived as a state) could be observed across different contexts or task settings.…”

“…The "broaden and build" theory for positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2004) provides an important framework from which some predictions could be derived in the present case. In this framework, positive mood is thought to increase creativity (Isen, 2008;Subramaniam, Kounios, Parrish, & Jung-Beeman, 2009), cognitive flexibility (Nadler, Rabi, & Minda, 2010), and broaden attention (Vanlessen et al, 2012(Vanlessen et al, , 2014, while it can also impair specific components of executive functions, like planning, task switching and inhibition abilities (Mitchell & Phillips, 2007), because of the enhanced distractibility accompanying this specific mood state (Dreisbach & Goschke, 2004). Hence, in light of this evidence positive mood could very well interfere with, rather than increase, performance (accuracy, speed), early error monitoring processes and behavioral adaptation following error commission (i.e., post-error slowing).…”

Effects of positive mood on probabilistic learning: Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates

“…Whether or not positive emotion can reliably influence these processes remains an open issue. Earlier research already showed that positive mood could be beneficial (compared to neutral or negative mood) to cognitive flexibility and in turn learning performance (when it is primarily rule-based or rule described; see Nadler et al, 2010). However, it is still unclear whether these changes in learning following the induction of positive mood may be explained by a differential sensitivity to cues signaling (violation of) reward.…”