Mood and Stereotyping: Affective States and the Use of General Knowledge Structures

We review how affective states moderate the impact of stereotypes in social judgment. The reported evidence suggests that stereotypes have more impact on judgments formed by individuals in a happy mood rather than sad mood, whereas the reverse holds for individuating information. We trace these effects to mood-dependent differences in processing style. Extending previous theorizing, we suggest that individuals are more likely to process new information in a bottom-up fashion when the situation is perceived as problematic, which is partially a function of being in a sad mood. In contrast, individuals are more likely to rely on pre-existing general knowledge structures when the situation is perceived as safe, which is partially a function of being in a happy mood. The available evidence indicates that the differential impact of general knowledge structures is not mediated by mood effects on processing capacity or motivation, in contrast to what previous theorizing suggested.