Neutral Mood Research Articles

Expectancy for negative affect relief due to smoking may not be predictive under acute mood situations.

Smoking behavior may be more persistent among those who expect that smoking will relieve negative affect (NA). Assessing smoking expectancies temporally close to mood situations could enhance the predictive value of that assessment. Dependent smokers (n = 71; 43 male, 28 female) participated in five laboratory sessions, each involving mood induction. The NA relief scale of the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire-Adult (SCQ-A), a very common measure of smoking expectancies during hypothetical situations, was assessed during initial screening. The SCQ-A was compared with a modified acute version administered each session, in which items asked about immediate expectancy for NA relief by smoking "right now" (termed Immediate Negative Affect Relief, or INAR). Actual NA relief due to smoking was measured each session by change on the NA scale of the Diener & Emmons Mood Form. The five sessions (counterbalanced) involved three different negative mood tasks, the negative mood condition of overnight smoking abstinence, and neutral mood (control). Generalized estimating equations showed that temporal proximity to the mood situation slightly enhanced the ability of expectancy to predict actual change in NA due to smoking, as the interaction with condition was significant for the INAR but marginal for the SCQ-A. However, the acute INAR predicted NA relief due to smoking only after overnight smoking abstinence and not during the other specific mood induction conditions, contrary to expectations, while the SCQ-A was not significant during any of the individual conditions. In sum, assessment of expectancy for NA relief may be of limited use in predicting actual NA relief from smoking during a current mood situation, aside from NA due to overnight abstinence.

Eeg Coherence between Prefrontal and Posterior Cortical Regions is Related to Negative Personality Traits

Eeg Coherence between Prefrontal and Posterior Cortical Regions is Related to Negative Personality Traits

Happily Distracted: Mood and a Benefit of Attention Dysregulation in Older Adults

Positive mood states are believed to broaden the focus of attention in younger adults, but it is unclear whether the same is true for older adults. Here we examined one consequence of broader attention that has been shown in young adults: that memory for distraction is greater for those in a positive mood. In the current study, positive and neutral moods were induced in older adults (M = 67.9) prior to a 1-back task in which participants were instructed to attend to relevant pictures and ignore distracting words. Following a 10-min filled interval, participants performed a word fragment completion task that tested implicit memory for the distracting words from the 1-back task. Older adults in the positive mood group showed greater implicit memory for previous distraction compared to those in the neutral mood group. These findings suggest that affect influences the ability to regulate attention in a similar manner for younger and older adults.

Evaluating the Mood State Dependence of Automatic Thoughts and Dysfunctional Attitudes in Remitted Versus Never-Depressed Individuals

The cognitive model of depression specifies the role of schema-driven negative processing biases in the onset and maintenance of depression. Research has shown that cognitive reactivity, or the ease with which negative thinking patterns are activated by mild changes in negative mood, is related to relapse and recurrence. The goal of this study was to examine cognitive reactivity following a mood prime in individuals vulnerable to depression. Formerly (n = 28) and never (n = 36) depressed individuals were assessed on two measures of negative cognition, the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) and Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS), before and after participating in a sad or neutral mood induction procedure (MIP). The negative mood induction resulted in increased belief in negative automatic thoughts across groups; however, only the formerly depressed participants assigned to this condition demonstrated increased DAS scores. Importantly, individuals who completed the neutral mood induction did not exhibit increases in negative cognition, providing evidence against the possibility that the MIP itself may lead to increases in negative cognition. These findings are discussed in relation to understanding the role of negative cognition and vulnerability to depression.

Within-person relationships between mood and creativity.

State mood has been proposed as a facilitator of creative behavior. Whereas positive mood compared to neutral mood generally facilitates creative performance, mood effects are weaker and less consistent when positive mood is compared to negative mood. These inconsistent results may be due to focusing only on mood valence, while neglecting or confounding mood activation. The current study is based on the dual-pathway model, which describes separate roles for mood valence and mood activation in facilitating creativity. We used experience sampling methodology to investigate the concurrent and lagged effects of mood valence and activation on creative process engagement (CPE) within-person over time among individuals working on a long-term project requiring creativity. We also investigated the moderating effects of individual differences in goal orientation and supervisory support on within-person mood-creativity relationships. As expected, we found that activating positive and activating negative moods were positively associated with concurrent CPE, whereas deactivating moods of both valences were negatively related to CPE. Activating negative mood had a significant lagged effect on CPE, whereas activating positive mood did not. We also found that activating positive mood was more strongly related to concurrent CPE among individuals with high rather than low learning goal orientation. Further, activating positive mood interacted with prove goal orientation and supervisory support for creativity, such that activating positive mood had the strongest association with CPE when both prove goal orientation and supervisory support were high.

Experimental evidence that changes in mood cause changes in body dissatisfaction among undergraduate women

Previous research has found concurrent and prospective associations between negative mood and body dissatisfaction; however, only experimental research can establish causal relationships. This study utilized an experimental design to examine the influence of negative mood on body dissatisfaction. Undergraduate women were randomly assigned to an experimental or control condition. Participants in the experimental condition (n=21) completed a negative mood induction procedure. Participants in the control condition (n=24) completed a neutral mood procedure. All participants completed visual analog scales regarding their mood and satisfaction with weight and shape before and after each manipulation. Body dissatisfaction increased following the procedure for experimental but not control participants, suggesting that negative mood caused increased body dissatisfaction. In cultures that idealize thinness, body dissatisfaction may arise from funneling general feelings of dysphoria into more concrete and culturally meaningful negative feelings about the body.

Retraction Note to: Happiness as alchemy: Positive mood leads to self-serving responses to social comparisons.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.1007/s11031-011-9216-y.].

Affect Regulation and Depressive Personality Disorder

Depressive Personality Disorder (DPD) has been under consideration for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1994; yet, few studies have been published that test whether those with DPD have affective experiences that are characterized exclusively by depression and negative affect. One hundred ninety-seven undergraduate students were interviewed for DPD and Borderline Personality Disorder with the Personality Disorder Interview for DSM-IV (Widiger, Mangine, Corbitt, Ellis, & Thomas, 1995), in order to control for frequently co-occurring BPD which is characterized by affective lability. Participants also were administered measures of affective lability, affective intensity, anxious and depressive states, and more trait-like manifestations of depression, anxiety, and anger. Results indicate that those with DPD may be described as having a mood state characterized by transitions from a baseline neutral mood to one of anxiety, with their experiences being more prominently depressed and dysphoric. They also have tendencies toward angry hostility, though they may not report frequent shifts from a baseline neutral mood to anger. Those with DPD also report intense, frequent experiences of depression and dysphoria, with many shifts between depression and anxiety.

Experimental Evidence That Positive Moods Cause Sociability

Although intuitive and predicted by the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, previous research has not seriously tested the idea that positive moods can cause sociability. The authors developed a new measure to assess preferences for social (vs. nonsocial) situations, carefully controlling for the fact that social situations are, on average, also more pleasant. Across two additional experiments (combined n = 237), the authors induced positive, negative, and neutral moods with film clips (between-subjects) and found that participants in the positive conditions felt more social (adjective ratings) and indicated stronger preferences for social situations (on the new measure), compared to those in both negative and neutral conditions. Beyond filling an important gap in the empirical record, the authors also explore the implications of this finding for broaden-and-build theory and a large literature linking trait extraversion with happiness.

Moderation of distress-induced eating by emotional eating scores

Earlier studies assessing the possible moderator effect of self-reported emotional eating on the relation between stress and actual food intake have obtained mixed results. The null findings in some of these studies might be attributed to misclassification of participants due to the use of the median splits and/or insufficient participants with extreme scores. The objective of the two current studies was to test whether it is possible to predict distress-induced eating with a self-report emotional eating scale by using extreme scorers. In study 1 ( n = 45) we used a between-subjects design and emotional eating was assessed after food intake during a negative or a neutral mood (induced by a movie). In study 2 ( n = 47) we used a within-subjects design and emotional eating was assessed well before food intake, which occurred after a control or stress task (Trier Social Stress Task). The main outcome measure was actual food intake. In both studies self-reported emotional eating significantly moderated the relation between distress and food intake. As expected, low emotional eaters ate less during the sad movie or after stress than during the neutral movie or after the control task, whereas high emotional eaters ate more. No such moderator effect was found for emotional eating in the entire sample ( n = 124) of study 1 using the median-split procedure or the full range of emotional eating scores. We conclude that it is possible to predict distress-induced food intake using self-reports of emotional eating provided that the participants have sufficiently extreme emotional eating scores.

Gender Differences in Smoking Following an Implicit Mood Induction

Smoking is significantly associated with negative affect, which may play an especially important role in the smoking behavior of women. The purpose of this laboratory study was to examine the role of gender in the relationship of negative mood and smoking maintenance for male and female smokers following an implicit mood induction using music. Ninety adult smokers (50% female) completed a laboratory session during which they were randomly assigned to a negative mood induction, a positive mood induction, or a neutral mood condition. Latency to smoke and number of cigarettes smoked were assessed during an ad libitumsmoking period following the mood induction. Female smokers began smoking more quickly following the negative mood induction when compared with males. There were no gender differences in the number of cigarettes smoked or for cravings to smoke by mood condition. This study demonstrated gender differences in the relationship between negative affect and smoking behavior following an implicit and subtle mood manipulation. A better understanding of gender differences in smoking behavior can provide valuable information about mechanisms that maintain smoking behavior and guide treatment development to help adults quit smoking.

Affective symptoms are associated with markers of inflammation and immune activation in bipolar disorders but not in schizophrenia

Objective Elevated levels of inflammation are reported in bipolar disorders (BP), but how this relates to affective symptoms is unclear. We aimed to determine if immune markers that consistently have been reported elevated in BP were associated with depressive and manic symptoms, and if this was specific for BP. Methods From a catchment area, 112 BP patients were included together with 153 schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and 239 healthy controls. Depression and mania were assessed and the patients were grouped into depressed, neutral, and elevated mood. We measured the immune markers tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (sTNF-R1), interleukin 1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra), interleukin 6 (IL-6), high sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP), osteoprotegerin (OPG) and von Willebrand factor (vWf) which have been found increased in severe mental disorders. Results In BP all inflammatory markers were lowest in depressed state, with significant group differences after control for confounders with respect to TNF-R1 ( p = 0.04), IL-1Ra ( p = 0.02), OPG ( p = 0.004) and IL-6 ( p = 0.005). STNF-R1 was positively correlated with the item elevated mood ( p = 0.02) whereas sad mood was negatively correlated with OPG ( p = 0.0003), IL-1Ra ( p = 0.001) and IL-6 ( p = 0.006). Compared to controls the neutral mood group had significantly higher levels of OPG ( p = 0.0003) and IL-6 ( p = 0.005), and the elevated mood group had higher levels of TNF-R1 ( p = 0.000005) and vWf ( p = 0.002). There were no significant associations between affective states orsymptoms in SCZ. Conclusions The current associations between inflammatory markers and affective symptomatology in BP and not SCZ suggest that immune related mechanisms are associated with core psychopathology of BP.

Depending on my mood: Mood-driven influences on text comprehension.

Reading comprehension is a critical component of success in educational settings. To date, research on text processing in educational and cognitive psychological domains has focused predominantly on cognitive influences on comprehension, and in particular, those influences that might be derived from particular tasks or strategies. However, there is growing interest in documenting the influences of emotional factors on the processes and products of text comprehension, because these factors are less likely to be associated with explicit reading strategies. The present study examines this issue by evaluating the degree to which mood can influence readers' processing of text. Participants in control, happy-induced, or sad-induced groups thought aloud while reading expository texts. Happy, sad, and neutral moods influenced the degree to which readers engaged in particular types of coherence-building processes in the service of comprehension. Although reading strategies clearly influence processing, understudied factors that are less explicitly goal-driven, such as mood, can similarly impact comprehension activity. These findings have important implications for the role of mood on reading instruction and evaluation.

Mood and Implicit Alcohol Expectancy Processes: Predicting Alcohol Consumption in the Laboratory

Implicit positive alcohol expectancy (PAE) processes are thought to respond phasically to external and internal stimuli-including mood states-and so they may exert powerful proximal influences over drinking behavior. Although social learning theory contends that mood states activate mood-congruent implicit PAEs, which in turn lead to alcohol use, there is a dearth of experimental research examining this mediation model relative to observable drinking. Moreover, an expectancy theory perspective might suggest that, rather than influencing PAEs directly, mood may moderate the association between PAEs and drinking. To test these models, this study examined the role of mood in the association between implicitly measured PAE processes (i.e., latency to endorse PAEs) and immediate alcohol consumption in the laboratory. Gender differences in these processes also were examined. College students (N = 146) were exposed to either a positive, negative, or neutral mood induction procedure, completed a computerized PAE reaction time (RT) task, and subsequently consumed alcohol ad libitum. The mood manipulation had no direct effects on drinking in the laboratory, making the mediation hypothesis irrelevant. Instead, gender and mood condition moderated the association between RT to endorse PAEs and drinking in the laboratory. For males, RT to tension reduction PAEs was a stronger predictor of volume of beer consumed and peak blood alcohol concentration in the context of general arousal (i.e., positive and negative mood) relative to neutral mood. RT to PAEs did not predict drinking in the laboratory for females. The results show that PAE processes are important determinants of immediate drinking behavior in men, suggesting that biased attention to mood-relevant PAEs-as indicated by longer RTs-predicts greater alcohol consumption in the appropriate mood context. The findings also highlight the need to consider gender differences in PAE processes. This study underscores the need for interventions that target automatic cognitive processes related to alcohol use.

Tryptophan depletion disinhibits punishment but not reward prediction: implications for resilience

RationaleWe have previously shown that tryptophan depletion enhances punishment but not reward prediction (Cools et al. in Neuropsychopharmacology 33:2291–2299, 2008b). This provided evidence for a valence-specific role of serotonin (which declines under depleted tryptophan) in aversive processing. Recent theoretical (Dayan and Huys in PLoS Comput Biol 4:e4, 2008) and experimental (Crockett et al. in J Neurosci 29:11993–11999, 2009) approaches have, however, further specified this role by showing that serotonin is critical for punishment-induced inhibition.ObjectivesWe sought to examine the role of serotonin in punishment-induced inhibition. We also examined the impact of induced mood on this effect to assess whether effects of tryptophan depletion on affective inhibition are moderated by mood.MethodsHealthy females consumed a balanced amino acid mixture with (N = 20) or without (N = 21) the serotonin precursor tryptophan. Each subject completed either negative or neutral mood induction. All subjects completed the reward and punishment reversal learning task adopted in the previous study.ResultsWe demonstrate a punishment prediction impairment in individuals who consumed tryptophan which was absent in individuals who were depleted of tryptophan. This effect was impervious to mood state.ConclusionsOur results suggest that serotonin promotes the inhibition of responses to punishing outcomes. This may lead to reduced punishment prediction accuracy in the presence of tryptophan and may contribute to resilience to affective disorders. Reduction of serotonin via tryptophan depletion then removes this inhibition. As such, we highlight a mechanism by which reduced serotonin can contribute to disorders of impulsivity and compulsivity as well as disorders of emotion.

Readers' Mood Affects News Information Processing

This study investigates the impact of three moods—happy, sad or neutral—on the way readers process news. Happy individuals recognize more global or general news but less local or detailed information than do those in a sad or neutral mood.

Autobiographical memory characteristics in depression vulnerability: Formerly depressed individuals recall less vivid positive memories

The differential activation hypothesis (DAH; Teasdale, 1988) proposes that individuals who are vulnerable to depression can be distinguished from non-vulnerable individuals by the degree to which negative thoughts and maladaptive cognitive processes are activated during sad mood. While retrieval of negative autobiographical memories is noted as one such process, the model does not articulate a role for deficits in recalling positive memories. Two studies were conducted to compare the autobiographical memory characteristics of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals following a sad mood induction. In Study 1, features of negative memories of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals did not differ, either in neutral or sad mood. For positive memories, groups did not differ in neutral mood, but following a sad mood induction, formerly depressed individuals rated their positive memories as less vivid than their never-depressed counterparts. Study 2 examined positive autobiographical memory features more comprehensively and replicated the finding that in a sad mood formerly depressed individuals recalled less vivid positive memories than never-depressed controls. These findings suggest that the phenomenological features of positive memories could represent an important factor in depressive vulnerability, and, more broadly, that depression may be associated with a deficit in the processing of positive material.

Happiness as alchemy: Positive mood leads to self-serving responses to social comparisons

People in a positive mood process information in ways that reinforce and maintain this positive mood. The current studies examine how positive mood influences responses to social comparisons and demonstrates that people in a positive mood interpret ambiguous information about comparison others in self-benefitting ways. Specifically, four experiments demonstrate that compared to negative mood or neutral mood participants, participants in a positive mood engage in effortful re-interpretations of ambiguously similar comparison targets so that they may assimilate to upward comparison targets and contrast from downward comparison targets.

The psychological consequence of experiencing shame: Self-sufficiency and mood-repair

Studies in social psychology and clinical psychology have demonstrated that shame is associated with social disengagement. We incorporated self-sufficiency with the mood-repair hypothesis from the feelings-as-information perspective to provide viable explanations for the psychological consequence of shame, suggesting that the mood-repair goal primed by shame is an inclination to behave self-sufficiently. In Study 1a and 1b, shamed participants preferred to work and play alone compared with control participants. Specifically, participants who were induced to feel ashamed were less likely to perform a task with a co-worker than were no-shame-prime participants. Furthermore, participants experiencing shame chose more individually focused leisure activities than did participants in a neutral mood. In Study 2, participants experiencing shame worked longer on an unsolvable task than control participants did before requesting help, suggesting that shame increased the tendency to be independent. Based on these results, we concluded that experiencing shame was associated with an increased tendency to behave self-sufficiently and to exhibit an inclination toward passive avoidance and active independence in social relationships as a means of amending a threatened social self.

Verhaltensmaße des Kontrollverlustes beim Essen: Bissgröße und Bissgeschwindigkeit

Loss of control (LOC) over eating is a common and psychopathologically relevant experience in childhood. The current study aimed at evaluating bite size and bite velocity as behavioral indicators of LOC eating in an experimental test meal study with a variation of mood. Children with or without LOC eating (N=120, 8-13 years) consumed a parent-child test meal and a child-only meal consisting of snack food, following induction of negative mood. Bite size and bite velocity were determined through behavioral observation, food intake was measured, and sense of LOC and mood were rated. Children with LOC eating did not show greater bite size and bite velocity than children without LOC eating. Bite size of children with LOC eating was increased in negative mood and decreased in neutral mood. Greater bite size and bite velocity predicted greater food intake at test meal and snack eating and greater LOC over eating at snack eating, however, without an intervening influence of negative mood. Bite size was significantly associated with greater body weight of child and parent. Bite size and bite velocity were not significantly associated with eating disorder psychopathology and varying levels of LOC symptoms. The evidence as to whether bite size and bite velocity are suited as behavioral indicators of LOC eating is not clear-cut. Further research on behavioral indicators of childhood LOC eating is warranted.