ABSTRACT
Recently, the question of what feeling states, or moods, are and the processes through which they influence judgments and behavior has received considerable attention. However, most of these discussions have either not mentioned autonomic arousal (Bartlett & Santrock, 1979; Bower, Monteiro, & Gilligan, 1978; Isen, Shalker, Clark, & Karp, 1978; Leight & Ellis, 1981; Macht, Spear, & Levis, 1977; Teasdale & Fogarty, 1979) or have mentioned it just in passing (Bower, 1981; Clark & Isen, 1982). The purpose of the present chapter is to propose a role for autonomic arousal in one model of what feeling states are and how they affect social judgments and behavior (Isen, 1975; Isen et al., 1978; Clark & Isen, 1982) and to present some preliminary evidence for this proposed role.
