When Positive Feelings Result in Negative Evaluations
Positive mood can lead to negative evaluations when the judgment criterion is based on expected feelings, such as judging a sad story negatively despite being happy because the story fails to induce sadness.
THE IDEA
When Positive Feelings Result in Negative Evaluations
Although feeling good typically results in positive evaluations, there are conditions under which individuals arrive at more negative judgments when they are in a positive mood. To use an example from an ingenious series of experiments by Martin, Abend, Sedikides, and Green (1997), suppose that a person is put in a happy mood and asked to read a sad story. Feeling happy due to the preceding mood induction, the person infers that the story is not a good exemplar of the category “sad stories,” or else she would now feel sad rather than happy. Note that such mood-incongruent judgments are due to shifts in the judgmental criterion used, rather than to changes in the informational value of one’s mood itself: Much as a sweet cookie makes for a poor salty snack, a story that apparently leaves us in a happy mood is a poor sad story. Therefore, a positive affective response may result in a negative evaluation under these specific conditions.
When to use it
Evaluating the quality of a sad movie or book while feeling happy.
Evaluating a relaxation experience by whether it leaves you calm, rather than simply by whether you feel good.
Judging the effectiveness of a sad or serious advertisement while in a cheerful mood.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Judging a sad story while in a happy mood
A person is induced to feel happy and then reads a sad story. Because they feel happy, they infer the story is a poor example of a sad story, leading to a negative evaluation of the story.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a time when your positive mood led you to judge something negatively because it didn't match your expected emotional response. How did this affect your decision?
How might this bias influence your evaluation of art, movies, or literature when you are in a good mood?
In what everyday situations could you identify this bias at work, and how might you adjust your judgment to be more objective?
References
- How would it feel? How do you feel? The role of affect in judgments of category exemplars — Martin, L. L., Abend, T., Sedikides, C., & Green, J. D. (1997)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Heuristics and Biases The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment (Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, Daniel Kahneman)