A fundamental error most of us make is to assume that most
actions are internally caused and therefore ignore external influences on behavior.
Positive moods tend to increase and negative moods tend to decrease the
incidence of a variety of errors and distortions in performance assessment
judgments. To be emotionally intelligent means knowing about these effects
and knowing how to avoid or correct them.
Mild negative mood promotes a more careful, systematic processing style
that is more attuned to the requirements of a given situation. However, a
strong motivation to do well overrides these mood effects. Positive moods
actually help people to do better. Even small changes in mood because of a
completely unrelated prior event can have a marked influence on the way
people plan and executive strategic interpersonal encounters.
Why do these effects occur? Uncertain and unpredictable social encounters
such as bargaining require open, constructive thinking. Positive moods may
selectively bring to mind (prime) more positive thoughts and ideas that lead
to more
optimistic expectations and the adoption of more cooperative and
integrative bargaining strategies.
Negative mood in turn seems to bring to mind more negative and
pessimistic memories and leads to the less cooperative and ultimately less
cooperative bargaining. These effects are largely automatic and subconscious
and few people realize that they occur at all. Being aware of and being able
to control and manage these subtle mood effects on our thinking and actions
can make all the difference to both happiness and effectiveness.
Not all people are equally influenced by their moods. In particular,
those who tend to brood seem to have increased intensity and duration of
negative reactions. Those who are good at influencing and those with a high
need for approval are less influenced by their moods when bargaining, for
example, because they habitually approach tasks such as bargaining from a
highly motivated, predetermined perspective. It is almost as they had their
minds made up about what to do and how to behave even before they started.
As they did not rely on open, memory-based thinking, mood had much less of
an opportunity to influence their plans and behaviors.
Perhaps predictably, individuals who score high on personality tests
measuring openness to feelings are much more influenced by mood when making
consumer judgments than are low scorers. Low anxiety people when feeling bad
respond more negatively to a threatening out-group. Highly anxious
individuals seem to do exactly the opposite.
In general, it seems clear that differences in personality or
"temperament" do play an important role in how people deal with mood. Much
of the evidence suggests that individual differences in mood operate through
a habitual preference for different ways of thinking. People who score high
on measures such as self-esteem, need to influence, need for social
desirability (status), or high anxiety seem to respond to social situations
in a motivated, controlled, and highly directed fashion that makes it less
likely that they openly search for and use mood-affected information from
their memory.
