Negative affective environments improve complex solving performance

Abstract

Based on recent affect–cognition theories (Bless et al., 1996; Fiedler, 2001; Sinclair, 1988), the present study predicted and showed a differentiated influence of nice and nasty environments on complex problem solving (CPS). Environments were constructed by manipulating the target value “capital” of a complex scenario: Participants in the nice environment (N=42) easily raised the capital and received positive feedback, whereas those in the nasty environment (N=42) hardly enhanced the capital and got negative feedback. The results showed that nasty environments increased negative and decreased positive affect. The reverse was true for nice environments. Furthermore, nasty environments influenced CPS by leading to a higher information retrieval and a better CPS performance. Surprisingly, the influence of environment on CPS was not mediated through affect (cf. Soldat & Sinclair, 2001), as recent affect–cognition theories suggest. The missing influence of affect and the strong impact of environment are discussed.

Keywords:

• Affect
• Affective cue
• Problem solving
• Processing style
• Feedback

Acknowledgements

The Postgraduate Fellowship Program of the State of Baden-Württemberg provided financial support for this work.

Thanks to Klaus Fiedler, Christian Fiebach and Samuel Greiff for comments on this paper, and to Uwe Holderried and Johanna Emich for entering the data.

Notes

¹Watson and Clark (1994) did not include the item “distressed” to measure the dimension sadness. However, an unpublished study by Röcke and Grühn (2003) proved that “distressed” loaded highly on sadness (Cronbach's α=.76).