Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 Announcements for March 16 Announcements: 1. Website will be available by Monday The URL of the page should be: In the meantime, use the following URL: Today’s discussants: Liz, Margo, Justin 3.2 nd exam next week 4.Paper outlines due week after break

Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 Theoretical Accounts for Emotion Effects on Attribution I. Informational (“Affect Priming”) Effect Emotion can facilitate recall and use of mood- congruent information (Bower). Evidence: Happy people identify stable, internal causes when achieving and identify unstable, external causes when doing badly Sad people show the reverse pattern (Forgas, Bower & Moylan, 1990).

Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 Theoretical Accounts for Emotion Effects on Attribution II. Processing Effect Good moods  Heuristic processing Top down, global, processing More attention to categorical information (e.g., famous name of speech writer) Not necessarily bad to be heuristic (Isen’s work) Bad moods  Systematic processing Bottom up, detailed, processing More attention to specific information (e.g., content of speech) How would this processing effect relate to FAE?

Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 How Does Processing Effect Relate to FAE? Assuming attribution is a two-stage process… 1. Explain behavior in terms of salient dispositional info.(“correspondent inference”) 2.Correct initial explanation (if motivated to do so) by factoring in situation. Heuristic processing would amplify FAE

Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 What Explains the Processing Effect? 1. Functional Explanations (e.g., Frijda) Emotions serve a “signaling function” – telling us what needs our attention (and what does not) Good moods recruit our attention to solve problems, bad moods do not. 2. Motivational Explanations 3. Processing Capacity Explanations

Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 Three Explanations for Processing Effect, (Cont.) 2. Motivational Theories (Clark & Isen, 1982) Mood maintenance - Happy people try to preserve good mood by avoiding cognitive effort Mood repair – Sad people try to fix mood by devoting more effort to solving problems

Reason, Passion, & Social CognitionWeek 9, Part 2 Three Explanations, (Cont.) 3. Processing Capacity Theories Positive and/or high-arousal moods may impair processing capacity.