ABSTRACT
In recent years, the relationship among mood states, information processing strategies, and task performance has been the subject of intense interest within social psychology. Certainly, the assertion that mood can affect both cognition and action is beyond debate; the questions to be explored involve the manner in which mood influences information processing and performance. A perusal of the literature exploring such mood effects, however, reveals a somewhat confusing collection of findings; furthermore, an examination of the major theoretical frameworks proposed in this area reveals that individually they are unable to account for the full pattern of data. We note two general positions about the effects of mood on processing and performance. One position argues that mood typically has stable and predictable effects on processing and thus on performance; a competing view argues that mood has no such stable processing implications and that the effects of mood on performance are dependent on subjects' current processing goals. In this chapter, we discuss the research supporting each of these views and present some new data suggesting a possible bridge between the two.
