Asking Nicely? The Effects of Mood on Responding to More or Less Polite Requests

Abstract

Receiving requests presents people with complex strategic choices. How does mood influence reactions to more or less polite requests? Based on the affect infusion model (AIM), it was predicted and found that (a) reactions to requests show a significant mood-congruent bias that (b) is greater for impolite requests that recruit more substantive processing. In an unobtrusive procedure, library readers saw pictures or text eliciting positive or negative moods. Their subsequent responses to more or less polite unobtrusive requests showed that negative mood produced more critical reactions and less compliance than did positive mood, and this effect was accentuated for impolite, unconventional requests. Superior memory for impolite requests confirmed the more substantive processing of these messages. The results support the AIM and confirm that different processing strategies mediate mood effects on language use. The implications of the findings for interpersonal behavior and for contemporary theories of affect and cognition are considered.