Bless H, Schwarz N, Clore G L, Golisano V, Rabe C, Wölk M
Psychologisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 1996 Oct;71(4):665-79. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.71.4.665.
The authors tested whether happy moods increase, and sad moods decrease, reliance on general knowledge structures. Participants in happy, neutral, or sad moods listened to a "going-out-for-dinner" story. Happy participants made more intrusion errors in recognition than did sad participants, with neutral mood participants falling in between (Experiments 1 and 2). Happy participants outperformed sad ones when they performed a secondary task while listening to the story (Experiment 2), but only when the amount of script-inconsistent information was small (Experiment 3). This pattern of findings indicates higher reliance on general knowledge structures under happy rather than sad moods. It is incompatible with the assumption that happy moods decrease either cognitive capacity or processing motivation in general, which would predict impaired secondary-task performance.
作者们测试了愉快情绪是否会增加、而悲伤情绪是否会减少对一般知识结构的依赖。处于愉快、中性或悲伤情绪状态的参与者听了一个“外出就餐”的故事。在识别过程中，愉快情绪的参与者比悲伤情绪的参与者出现更多的侵入性错误，中性情绪的参与者则介于两者之间（实验1和实验2）。在听故事的同时执行一项次要任务时，愉快情绪的参与者比悲伤情绪的参与者表现更好（实验2），但前提是与脚本不一致的信息量较少（实验3）。这种研究结果模式表明，在愉快而非悲伤的情绪状态下，对一般知识结构的依赖程度更高。这与那种认为愉快情绪通常会降低认知能力或处理动机（而这会预测次要任务表现受损）的假设不一致。
