Mood and Perception (08-02-10)

As reported in earlier blog posts, design has a significant influence on experienced mood.  Recent research by Avramova and her colleagues indicates that while being in a negative mood “promotes attention to a salient target,” being in a positive mood “enhances attention to both target and context.” This means that when people are in a negative mood they are more likely to focus directly on an item being evaluated, but when in a positive mood they will compare the item being judged to others being simultaneously experienced. As the researchers state “Although everything is relative, it is more so when one is happy.”  In addition, people in a positive mood “have a better memory for specific context features than did those in a negative mood.”

The findings presented indicate that people can be expected to be in a positive mood, designers must be careful to insure that the context is consistent with the focal element and design intention, while this consistency is not so important when people can be expected to be in a negative mood (e.g., a wedding chapel vs. the department of motor vehicles).

This research is compliments previous research indicating that “happy people typically have a broader visual scope, focus on more global features of stimuli, and boast a more open and generative mindset, whereas sad people typically have a more narrow visible scope, focus on local features of stimuli and have a more detail-oriented analytic mindset.”  Although these findings are consistent with that material “That you can blame your mood for buying a couch that would not fit your living room or for lifting a weight that could cause you back pain is both interesting and new.”

Yana Avramova, Diederik Stapel, and Davy Lerouge.  2010.  “Mood and Context-Dependence:  Positive Mood Increases and Negative Mood Decreases the Effects of Context on Perception.”  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 99, no. 2, pp. 203-214.