Mood influences on helping: Direct effects or side effects?

Abstract

A review of the literature concerning the promotive influence of experimentally generated happiness and sadness on helping suggested that (a) increased helping among saddened subjects is an instrumental response designed to dispel the helper's negative mood state, and (b) increased helping among elated subjects is not an instrumental response to (maintain) the heightened effect but is a concomitant of elevated mood. A derivation from this hypothesis-that enhanced helping is a direct effect of induced sadness but a side effect of induced happiness-was tested in an experiment that placed subjects in a happy, neutral, or sad mood. Through a placebo drug manipulation, half of the subjects in each group were led to believe that their induced moods were temporarily fixed, that is, temporarily resistant to change from normal events. The other subjects believed that their moods were labile and, therefore, manageable. As expected, saddened subjects showed enhanced helping only when they believed their moods to be changeable, whereas elated subjects showed comparable increases in helping whether they believed their moods to be labile or fixed.

Walking the tightrope between feeling good and being accurate: Mood as a resource in processing persuasive messages.

“…Negative mood presumably depleted the resources needed to cope with the information regarding the health risks of caffeine consumption, leading high caffeine consumers to focus on the health benefits of caffeine consumption, perhaps in an attempt to improve their mood (see Clark & Isen, 1982;Isen & Simmonds, 1978;Manucia et al, 1984;Morris & Reilly, 1987;Wegener & Petty, 1994).…”

“…Participants undergoing premenstrual stress in a Zillman (1988) study, for example, favored watching comedy programs on TV. Similarly, the increased tendency to help, observed under both positive and negative mood states, is presumably due to the good feelings that result from such behavior (Manucia et al, 1984;Schaller & Cialdini, 1990). Studies have found support for mood management in the context of information processing as well.…”

“…A pervasive motivational shift observed under positive and negative affective states is one of maintaining the positive state (e.g., Isen & Simmonds, 1978) and repairing the negative state (e.g., Manucia, Baumann, & Cialdini, 1984;Morris & Reilly, 1987). Participants undergoing premenstrual stress in a Zillman (1988) study, for example, favored watching comedy programs on TV.…”

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

“…However, what about negative affect? Of interest, negative moods such as sadness or guilt have also been shown to promote helping-for example, when the helping promises to improve mood (e.g., Manucia, Baumann, & Cialdini, 1984), when the person in need calls attention to his or her plight (McMillen et al, 1977), when the negative mood does not lead to self-preoccupation (Kidd & Marshall, 1982), or when individuals feel they have harmed someone (Salovey, Mayer, & Rosenhan, 1991). Thus, researchers have argued that positive moods lead to helping under the majority of circumstances, whereas negative moods lead to helping only under certain conditions-namely, when the rewards of helping are high and the costs are low (e.g., Cunningham, Shaffer, Barbee, Wolff, & Kelley, 1990).…”

What triggers prosocial effort? A positive feedback loop between positive activities, kindness, and well-being

“…For example, Cialdini and colleagues' concomitance theory proposes that positive emotions may not prompt helping behaviors directly, but rather indirectly via the byproducts of positivity, such as liking others more, believing good things will happen in the future (and thus resources can be shared in the present), having an enhanced sense of self-control, and recalling the rewards of past good deeds (Cialdini, Kenrick, & Baumann, 1982;Manucia, Baumann, & Cialdini, 1984). Hence, to the extent that positive triggers enhance positive emotions, they can set off prosociality via multiple indirect mechanisms that are activated by positive emotions.…”