Washington, July 15 (ANI): There has been considerable debate about how affect (moods, emotions, feelings) influences the quality of people's decisions.
Now a new study has suggested that it's better to go shopping when we are in a good mood, because we are more likely to make quicker and more consistent judgments than unhappy people.
Researchers Paul M. Herr and Derrick F. Davis of Virginia Tech, Christine M. Page of Skidmore College and Bruce E. Pfeiffer of the University of New Hampshire looked at how mood influences a very basic element of decision-making - deciding if an object is liked or disliked.
The participants were asked to press a key labeled 'yes' if the word matched their feeling about the object they had just seen, or the key marked 'no' if it did not.
They manipulated study participants' moods by showing them pictures of likable objects (puppies) or unpleasant images (diseased feet), and then showed them pictures of common objects, one at a time.
The participants then chose from a list of evaluative adjectives, positive and negative, which were presented in a random order.
The researchers found that people who were in a good mood responded more quickly and more consistently to positive adjectives than negative adjectives.
In other words, if they responded that they liked an object, they were less likely to respond later that they disliked it.
"These results have implications for how we navigate our world. The decisions we make about liking or disliking objects around us are fundamental to which things we approach and which things we avoid," said the researchers.
The study appears in the Journal of Consumer Research. (ANI)
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