ABSTRACT
One empirical generalization that has virtually taken on the status of a truism in social psychology is that context can have a profound impact on a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. We know, for example, that ordinary, kind, caring individuals may, under the right conditions, perform behaviors that are harmful to others (Milgram, 1974) or fail to perform behaviors that would be helpful to others (Darley & Latané, 1968). We also know that personality traits (Asch, 1946) and behaviors (Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977) can take on different meanings in different contexts and that evaluations of a target stimulus can be significantly affected by the contextual stimuli with which the target is judged (Manis, Biernat, & Nelson, 1991). Observations such as these, showing that different contexts can significantly influence a wide range of phenomena, form the basis of the mood-as-input model (Martin, Abend, Sedikides, & Greene, 1997; Martin, Achee, Ward, & Harlow, 1993; Martin & Davies, 1998; Martin & Stoner, 1996; Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, 1993). The core assumption of the model is that the effects of mood on evaluation and motivation are, by their very nature, context-dependent.
