Affect in social judgments

Abstract

This paper surveys current empirical and theoretical knowledge about how affective states influence social judgments. Early work on the role of emotions in social perception is reviewed, followed by a discussion of contemporary socio-cognitive theories seeking to explain such effects. Several of our empirical studies are summarised, demonstrating affective influences on social judgments, due to (a) associative, (b) selective attention, (c) memory and (d) learning biases. The role of moods in judgments about the self, decision-making and in clinical conditions are considered. Findings confirm the consistent and significant influence of affective states in biasing the learning, recall and use of affect-consistent materials in judgments. The effects of negative moods were found to be less reliable and more context dependent than positive mood effects. Alternative theoretical interpretations of our and others' results are considered, and an extended mood-priming model is proposed as the best currently available explanation of the empirical Findings.