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Positive affect and mood-congruent attitudes: Introducing a state-trait model of the social judgement process
Abstract
The overwhelming majority of affect and social judgement research has focused on the judgments of people in either positive or negative moods rather than focusing on individuals experiencing discrete effects within these broad categories. Moreover, the influence of personality, temperament, and cognitive traits on the social judgement process has not been systematically examined. To overcome these two limitations an experiment was conducted to determine if (a) social judgment outcomes differ as a function of the hedonic valence and arousal (activation) level of discrete positive affects and (b) to model the process(es) by which traits and states impact the social judgment process. Three hundred and eight subjects reported their trait levels of introversion-extraversion, affect intensity, and need for cognition. Subsequently, subjects were induced into an affective state (content, happy, surprise, neutral) and a cognitive state (heuristic versus substantive information processing). Subjects' thoughts and attitudes towards a target social group ("secretaries") were then assessed. Results indicated that subjects who were manipulated into either a content or a happy affect state made more positive judgments (attitudes) about secretaries than subjects who were manipulated into either a surprised or a neutral condition. With respect to the process by which this outcome occurred, when the cognitive demands of the situation were low, a cognitive trait (need for cognition) and the affective state directly influenced the judgment. However, when the cognitive demands of the situation were high, only an indirect effect of affective state through a cognitive state mediator influenced the social judgment. Discussion focused on a new state-trait model of the social judgment process.
Subject Area
Personality|Social psychology
Recommended Citation
Roesch, Scott Christopher, "Positive affect and mood-congruent attitudes: Introducing a state-trait model of the social judgement process" (1996). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9623638.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9623638