Can negative mood improve language understanding? Affective influences on the ability to detect ambiguous communication

How negative mood hinders belief updating in depression: results from two experimental studies

BACKGROUND

In two experimental studies, we tested the hypothesis that negative mood would hinder the revision of negative beliefs in response to unexpectedly positive information in depression, whereas positive mood was expected to enhance belief updating.

METHODS

In study 1 (N = 101), we used a subclinical sample to compare the film-based induction of sad v. happy mood with a distraction control group. Subsequently, participants underwent a well-established paradigm to examine intra-individual changes in performance-related expectations after unexpectedly positive performance feedback. In study 2, we applied the belief-updating task from study 1 to an inpatient sample (N = 81) and induced sad v. happy mood via film-clips v. recall of autobiographic events.

RESULTS

The results of study 1 showed no significant group differences in belief updating; the severity of depressive symptoms was a negative predictor of belief revision, though, and there was a non-significant trend suggesting that the presence of sad mood hindered belief updating in the subgroup of participants with a diagnosed depressive episode. Study 2 revealed that participants updated their expectations significantly less in line with positive feedback when they underwent the induction of negative mood prior to feedback, relative to positive mood.

CONCLUSIONS

By indicating that the presence of negative mood can hinder the revision of negative beliefs in clinically depressed people, our findings suggest that learning from new experiences can be hampered if state negative mood is activated. Thus, interventions relying on learning from novel positive experiences should aim at reducing state negative mood in depression.

Color features continuously represent negative and positive aspects of sadness

Emotion is assumed to be stored in long-term memory as a concept by a feature (e.g., "tears" for "sadness") that is a memory unit of a concept. Memory activation of emotion concepts via features is supposed to enable recognition of emotional states. Emotion concepts are associated with various perceptual features oriented toward the interior and exterior of the body. Although previous studies have revealed that internal perceptual features need to recognize emotional experiences, how external perceptual features contribute to memory representation of emotions is unclear. This study focused on sadness and aimed to identify how color, which is an external perceptual feature, represents sadness in long-term memory. We hypothesized that colors continuously represent positive and negative aspects of sadness. Participants rated the congruency between each of 99 color visual stimuli and five major emotions, six sadness-related situations, and five psychological properties. Consistent with the prediction, two bluish color groups appeared to represent sadness based on emotional congruency ratings. Colors with the highest sadness ratings were related to dark and dull bluish ones. On the other hand, lighter bluish colors mixed with green appearance were similarly congruent with both sadness and happiness. The lightness properties of these sadness-related bluish colors continuously represent sadness dominancy (sadness rating minus happiness rating). Additionally, sadness dominancy of each sadness-related color group was differently associated with sadness-related situations. These findings indicate that color features contribute to memory representation of sadness in association with situations and that color features continuously instantiate negative and positive aspects of sadness.

Mood effects on semantic processes: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

Mood (i.e., our current background affective state) often unobtrusively yet pervasively affects how we think and behave. Typically, theoretical frameworks position it as an embodied source of information (i.e., a biomarker), activating thinking patterns that tune our attention, perception, motivation, and exploration tendencies in a context-dependent manner. Growing behavioural and electrophysiological research has been exploring the mood–language interactions, employing numerous semantics-oriented experimental paradigms (e.g., manipulating semantic associations, congruity, relatedness, etc.) along with mood elicitation techniques (e.g., affectively evocative film clips, music, pictures, etc.). Available behavioural and electrophysiological evidence has suggested that positive and negative moods differently regulate the dynamics of language comprehension, mostly due to the activation of mood-dependent cognitive strategies. Namely, a positive mood has been argued to activate global and heuristics-based processing and a negative mood – local and detail-oriented processing during language comprehension. Future research on mood–language interactions could benefit greatly from (i) a theoretical framework for mood effects on semantic memory, (ii) measuring mood changes multi-dimensionally, (iii) addressing discrepancies in empirical findings, (iv) a replication-oriented approach, and (v) research practices counteracting publication biases.

Negative vs. Positive Psychology: a Review of Science of Well-Being

Happiness, well-being, human freedom, and life events are interconnected. Nevertheless, the debate about human well-being struggles to find an exact definition. Literature debates on the importance of positive psychology or adverse effects of negative psychology in the well-being context discuss separately. However, both counter each other but have their significance and indisputable fact. Human psychology evolves around determinism and Free Will. One type of determinism is hard, while the other is soft. Individuals who are adamant about and embrace acceptance of chances are driven by their nature and psychology to choose negative behaviors under hard determinism. They give up their free will, whereas soft determinists use it to make choices and behave positively. However, the researchers looked at negative psychology as a useful aspect and positive psychology's dark side. We argued that there are reasons to suppose that chances can develop into options and vice versa. From a well-being perspective, negative and positive psychological strengths and weaknesses can be investigated. From the literature review, useful hypotheses for future research have been derived from our synthesis.

Regret Now, Compensate It Later: The Benefits of Experienced Regret on Future Altruism

This article explores how experienced regret and relief evoked in a risky gambling task influence subsequent intertemporal pro-social behavior. We apply a dictator game experiment with delayed rewards to investigate the effect on donating behavior by simultaneously the time delay when the recipient accepts the donation and the emotions experienced by the participant. We examine this effect using a choice titration procedure. The results reveal that independent of the prior experienced emotions, participants’ donations decrease as the time delay rises; the hyperbolic model provides a better explanation of this finding. Significantly, experienced regret impacts the shape of the social discount function with delayed rewards, which is reflected in notably different discount rates. Participants who experienced regret exhibit a lower discount rate than those in the relief condition. Note that this distinct type of generosity differs significantly at the 14-day delay but not at the shortest and longest. It follows that regret can promote future altruism and intertemporal pro-social behavior, depending on the delay.

In a Bilingual Mood: Mood Affects Lexico-Semantic Processing Differently in Native and Non-Native Languages

Positive and negative moods tend to have differential effects on lexico-semantic processing in the native language (L1). Though accumulating evidence points to dampened sensitivity to affective stimuli in the non-native language (L2), little is known about the effects of positive and negative moods on L2 processing. Here, we show that lexico-semantic processing is differently affected by positive and negative moods only in L1. Unbalanced Polish–English bilinguals made meaningfulness judgments on L1 and L2 sentences during two EEG recording sessions featuring either positive- or negative-mood-inducing films. We observed a reduced N1 (lexical processing) for negative compared to positive mood in L2 only, a reduced N2 (lexico-semantic processing) in negative compared to positive mood in L1 only, a reduced N400 (lexico-semantic processing) for meaningless compared to meaningful L1 sentences in positive mood only, and an enhanced late positive complex (semantic integration and re-analysis) for L2 compared to L1 meaningful sentence in negative mood only. Altogether, these results suggest that positive and negative moods affect lexical, lexico-semantic, and semantic processing differently in L1 and L2. Our observations are consistent with previous accounts of mood-dependent processing and emotion down-regulation observed in bilinguals.

Message Sidedness in Health Claims: Roles of Mood State, Product Involvement, and Self-Rated Health Status

Most of the previous studies with respect to message sidedness mainly focus on the effect of message sidedness in advertising on behavior of consumers and it is unknown how consumers respond to different message sidedness when a one-sided or two-sided message in claims shown on the package of a healthy food product. This study explores the underlying mechanisms how consumers respond to different message sidedness in claims. The results indicate that two-sided messages in claims are more persuasive than one-sided messages because they pass the “sufficiency threshold.” In addition, the results of this article show that mood state, product involvement, and self-rated health of individuals moderate the relationship between message sidedness in claims and product evaluation.

Reducing the Halo Effect by Stimulating Analytic Thinking

Abstract. The halo effect is one of the most common threats to interpersonal evaluation. In the present study, we examined the role of an alternative approach to reducing the halo effect, namely by stimulating analytic thinking. In Study 1, we established the validity of the current paradigm in inducing the halo effect. In Study 2 and Study 3, we investigated whether the halo effect could be reduced when analytic thinking was activated either with Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices or with a writing task. Results of both studies showed that participants were less biased by the irrelevant central trait when analytic thinking was activated compared to the control group, suggesting that priming analytic thinking ahead of a judgmental task can reduce the halo effect.

Identifying Positive Features of the Sadness Prototype

Sadness, an emotional experience of daily life, is typically associated with negative experiences such as the loss of a loved one. However, sadness also has an adaptive function, as it can help us respond appropriately to environmental demands. While previous research has revealed positive functions of sadness, it is unclear whether laypeople recognize any positive aspects of sadness. In the present three-part study, we aimed to identify whether laypeople conceptualize any positive features of sadness. In Part 1, we asked Japanese participants (n = 122) to describe the features of "sadness," and their responses revealed 37 different sadness features, some of which were assumed to be positive aspects (e.g., meaning making). In Part 2, we asked a second group of Japanese participants (n = 140) to rate the centrality of each previously named feature, and we then classified the features into either central or peripheral sadness features. At this point, participants reported positive aspects of sadness (e.g., co-occurrence of positive emotion). To confirm the differences between central and peripheral features, in Part 3 we examined automatic responses toward these features from a third group of Japanese participants (n = 91) and demonstrated the relationship between the concept of sadness and its characteristic features. We presented these participants with a subset of the features of sadness and then asked them to complete a recall and recognition task. As expected, they recalled central features more often than peripheral features of sadness, and they generated false recognitions to central features. In conclusion, this three-part study indicated that there are positive features related to the function of sadness that laypeople can identify in their mental lexicon.

Uncovering Susceptibility Risk to Online Deception in Aging

OBJECTIVES

Fraud in the aged is an emerging public health problem. An increasingly common form of deception is conducted online. However, identification of cognitive and socioemotional risk factors has not been undertaken yet. In this endeavor, this study extended previous work suggesting age effects on susceptibility to online deception.

METHODS

Susceptibility was operationalized as clicking on the link in simulated spear-phishing emails that young (18-37 years), young-old (62-74 years), and middle-old (75-89 years) Internet users received, without knowing that the emails were part of the study. Participants also indicated for a set of spear-phishing emails how likely they would click on the embedded link (susceptibility awareness) and completed cognitive and socioemotional measures to determine susceptibility risk profiles.

RESULTS

Higher susceptibility was associated with lower short-term episodic memory in middle-old users and with lower positive affect in young-old and middle-old users. Greater susceptibility awareness was associated with better verbal fluency in middle-old users and with greater positive affect in young and middle-old users.

DISCUSSION

Short-term memory, verbal fluency, and positive affect in middle-old age may contribute to resilience against online spear-phishing attacks. These results inform mechanisms of online fraud susceptibility and real-life decision-supportive interventions toward fraud risk reduction in aging.

Happy Believers and Sad Skeptics? Affective Influences on Gullibility

How does affect influence gullibility? After a brief consideration of the nature of gullibility, I describe a series of experiments that explored the prediction that in situations in which close attention to stimulus information is required, negative mood can reduce gullibility and positive mood can increase gullibility. The experiments examined mood effects on truth judgments, vulnerability to misleading information, the tendency to uncritically accept interpersonal messages, the detection of deception, and the tendency to see meaning in random or meaningless information. In all of these domains, positive mood promoted gullibility and negative mood reduced it. The practical and theoretical significance of these convergent findings are discussed, and the practical implications of affectively induced gullibility in real-life domains are considered.

On emotion-cognition integration: The effect of happy and sad moods on language comprehension

I comment on Pessoa's (2013) idea that the interaction between emotion and cognition cannot be reduced to mutual interference. As an example that bolsters Pessoa's position, I discuss the effects of happy and sad moods on discourse and sentence comprehension. I distinguish between the effects of moods elicited without participants' knowledge (incidental) and moods elicited with participants' contribution (constructed).