The effect of momentary mood on appraisal of facial affect and distrust: an experimental approach using ambulatory assessment

ABSTRACT

Previous laboratory studies have demonstrated that an observer’s current mood can influence their processing of facial stimuli, for instance, the appraisal of facial affect. The aim of the present study was to explore the association between current mood and face processing in participants’ daily lives, thereby making use of naturally occurring affective states. We employed Ambulatory Assessment (AA) and included two experimental tasks to test whether current mood predicts how participants evaluate (i) the valence of emotional faces and (ii) facial trustworthiness. We hypothesised a mood-congruent processing, such that individuals would rate pictures of faces more negatively and less trustworthy, the more negative their current mood was. We recruited 42 participants who completed a 7-day AA study with six random prompts per day. At each prompt, participants provided self-reports on momentary mood and completed an emotion rating task and a hypothetical distrust game. Results show that negative momentary mood was significantly associated with higher levels of distrust, but was not significantly associated with more negative emotion ratings. We discuss the incremental value and feasibility of implementing experimental tasks in AA contexts and the opportunities this opens for assessing affective and cognitive processes in natural environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Mood congruency
• emotion processing
• distrust
• ecological momentary assessment
• ambulatory assessment

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Isabel Thielmann for her advice on trust questionnaires. Furthermore, we would like to thank Katharina Brunner, Sophia Rose, and Jessica Knodel for their help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All participants underwent a careful diagnostic process to determine their mental health (see online supplement).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number GRK2350/1].