The effects of induced mood on expectancy-based illusory correlations

Abstract

Two studies investigated the impact of induced mood states on expectancy-based illusory correlations about occupational groups. We expected incongruency between the valence of induced mood and the valence of presented stimulus information to increase difficulty of processing, which was in turn expected to increase the magnitude of illusory correlations. In the first study, subjects in whom a positive, negative, or neutral mood had been induced read sentences that described members of four occupational groups with stereotypic and unrelated positive or negative attributes. Illusory correlations in subjects' judgments (overestimations of the frequency with which stereotypic, relative to unrelated, attributes had described each occupational group) were stronger when the valence of the attributes was incongruent with mood state. In Experiment 2, subjects took longer to read sentences containing stereotype-unrelated attributes than to read sentences containing stereotype-confirming material when the valence of the descriptive attributes was incongruent with subjects' mood state. Implications of these findings for theoretical accounts of the effects of mood on stereotyping are discussed.