Mood management across affective states: the hedonic contingency hypothesis.

Mood management in positive and negative moods is relevant to a variety of social phenomena and has been especially important in the helping literature. Theorists have predicted that sad people strategically engage in mood management activities more than happy people. However, application of learning principles across affective states led the authors to hypothesize that hedonic rewards are more contingent on scrutiny of hedonic consequences in happy than sad states. Thus, happy people should scrutinize the hedonic consequences of potential behaviors more than sad people. A selective exposure paradigm was used to test this hedonic contingency hypothesis. People in whom happy, sad, or neutral states were induced were asked to choose activities in which to engage. In 3 experiments, happy people based their choices on the affective consequences of those activities more than sad or neutral individuals. Implications for interpreting past work are discussed.