Mood as input: People have to interpret the motivational implications of their moods.

Abstract

It was hypothesized that moods have few, if any, motivational or processing implications, but are input to other processes that determine their motivational implications. In Experiment 1, Ss read a series of behaviors in forming an impression. When told to read the behaviors until they felt they had enough information, those in positive moods (PMs) stopped sooner than did those in negative moods (NMs). When told to stop when they no longer enjoyed reading the behaviors, NMs stopped sooner than PMs. In Experiment 2, Ss generated a list of birds from memory. When told to stop when either they thought it was a good time to stop or they simply felt like stopping, PMs stopped sooner than NMs. When told to stop when they no longer enjoyed the task, NMs stopped sooner than PMs. The findings extend work by others (e.g.,

Proactive work behavior: Forward-thinking and change-oriented action in organizations.

“…Moreover, proactive behavior, with its focus on change, requires regulating one's effort, staying 'on-task', and not being de-railed by negative events. Evidence suggests that positive mood can create an upward spiral of self-regulatory advantage that will help individuals sustain their proactive action (Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, 1993). Parker therefore proposed that positive affect also promotes the goal striving that is necessary for proactivity.…”

A Self-Regulation Perspective on Avoidance and Persistence Behavior in Chronic Pain

“…One of these models is the 8 mood-as-input model. The original mood-as-input model proposes that behaviour is a consequence of interactions between stop rules and affect-regulation processes 40 .…”

Encouraging the perceptual underdog: Positive affective priming of nonpreferred local–global processes.

“…However, support for this view is Encouraging 5 inconsistent, with happy individuals showing the ability to process information more thoroughly than people in a negative or neutral mood under certain circumstances (Bless, Mackie, & Schwarz, 1992). Instead, the heuristic-versus-analytic view of affect may be explained in terms of an extension of the affect-as-information approach (Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, 1993;Schwarz & Clore, 1983), which proposes that emotions guide processing when they are considered relevant to the task being performed. According to this approach, positive feelings are taken as an indication that the current situation is satisfactory and contains no imminent threat, and thus signal that it is sufficient to rely on less demanding heuristic strategies.…”