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Abstract
How do moods influence the way people explain various everyday social episodes? Based on recent affect-cognition theories, this experiment predicted and found a significant mood-congruent bias in causal explanations for realistic work events. After an autobiographical mood induction, participants (102 schoolteachers): (a) provided causal attributions for; and (b) formed impressions about four workplace episodes with good or bad outcomes, and involving either themselves, or a colleague. There was a significant affect-congruent influence: Happy mood produced more optimistic and lenient causal attributions while those in a negative mood were more critical. Mood also influenced some attributional biases, such as the actor/observer effect. These results are discussed in terms of the cognitive strategies that mediate mood effects on judgements, and implications for judgements about everyday social events, and for current affect'cognition theorising are considered.
