ABSTRACT
Being in a good or a bad mood is perhaps the most ubiquitous and universally experienced subjective state that accompanies us throughout our daily lives. Most of the time, these underlying mood states are neither intense nor salient enough to command conscious attention. What are the mechanisms that help us to maintain everyday moods within a relatively narrow, nonintrusive range? How do people manage to balance their affective states without experiencing too extreme fluctuations? If social psychology is indeed the science of subjective experience, as Wegner and Gilbert claim in their provocative introductory chapter to this volume, one key question we need to understand is exactly how affective experiences are spontaneously regulated as we pass through our everyday routines.
