Citation

Ziegler R, Schlett C, Aydinli A. Person. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 2013; 39(8): 1083-1096.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0146167213490808

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The present research examined when happy individuals' processing of a counterattitudinal message is guided by mood-congruent expectancies versus hedonic considerations. Recipients in positive, neutral, or negative mood read a strong or weak counterattitudinal message which either contained a threat to attitudinal freedom or did not contain such a threat. As expected, a freedom-threatening counterattitudinal message was more mood threatening than a counterattitudinal message not threatening freedom. Furthermore, as predicted by the mood-congruent expectancies approach, people in positive mood processed a nonthreatening counterattitudinal message more thoroughly than people in negative mood. Message processing in neutral mood lay in between. In contrast, as predicted by the hedonic-contingency view, a threatening counterattitudinal message was processed less thoroughly in positive mood than in neutral mood. In negative mood, processing of a threatening counterattitudinal message was as low as in positive mood. These findings suggest that message processing is determined by mood congruency unless hedonic considerations override expectancy-based processing inclinations.

Language: en