When It Feels Right, Go With It: Affective Regulation of Affiliative Social Tuning

Abstract

Past research demonstrates that when people are motivated to affiliate with another, their beliefs and implicit attitudes spontaneously adjust toward that person's apparent beliefs, a phenomenon dubbed affiliative social tuning. Two experiments examined the role of people's mood in regulating affiliative social tuning of implicit and explicit racial prejudice. Based on the idea that positive mood encourages and negative mood discourages pursuit of accessible goals, we predicted that when participants were in positive moods, interpersonal goals and the apparent beliefs of an interaction partner would interactively shape participants' racial prejudice. In contrast, when participants were in negative moods, interpersonal goals and the apparent beliefs of an interaction partner were not expected to impact racial prejudice. Results of two experiments supported these predictions. Other ways that mood may shape affiliative social tuning are discussed.