In psychology, a mood is an affective state. In contrast to emotions or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence. In other words, people usually talk about being in a good mood or a bad mood.
Mood also differs from temperament or personality traits which are even longer-lasting. Nevertheless, personality traits such as optimism and neuroticism predispose certain types of moods. Long term disturbances of mood such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder are considered mood disorders. Mood is an internal, subjective state but it often can be inferred from posture and other behaviors. "We can be sent into a mood by an unexpected event, from the happiness of seeing an old friend to the anger of discovering betrayal by a partner. We may also just fall into a mood."
Research also shows that a person's mood can influence how they process advertising. Mood has been found to interact with gender to affect consumer processing of information.
Etymology
Etymologically, the word mood derives from the Old English mōd which denoted military courage, but could also refer to a person's humor, temper, or disposition at a particular time. The cognate Gothic mōds translates both θυμός "mood, spiritedness" and ὀργή "anger".
Types of mood
Positive mood
Positive mood can be caused by many different aspects of life as
well as have certain effects on people as a whole. Good mood is usually
considered a state without an identified cause; people cannot pinpoint
exactly why they are in a good mood. People seem to experience a
positive mood when they have a clean slate, have had a good night sleep,
and feel no sense of stress in their life.
There have been many studies done on the effect of positive
emotion on the cognitive mind and there is speculation that positive
mood can affect our minds in good or bad ways. Generally, positive mood
has been found to enhance creative problem solving and flexible yet
careful thinking.
Some studies have stated that positive moods let people think
creatively, freely, and be more imaginative. Positive mood can also help
individuals in situations in which heavy thinking and brainstorming is
involved. In one experiment, individuals who were induced with a
positive mood enhanced performance on the Remote Associates Task (RAT), a
cognitive task that requires creative problem solving.
Moreover, the study also suggests that being in a positive mood
broadens or expands the breadth of attentional selection such that
information that may be useful to the task at hand becomes more
accessible for use. Consequently, greater accessibility of relevant
information facilitates successful problem solving. Positive mood also
facilitates resistance to temptations, especially with regards to unhealthy food choices.
Positive mood has also been proven to show negative effects on
cognition as well. According to the article "Positive mood is associated
with implicit use of distraction", "There is also evidence that
individuals in positive moods show disrupted performance, at least when
distracting information is present".
The article states that other things in their peripheral views can
easily distract people who are in good moods; an example of this would
be if you were trying to study in the library (considering you are in a
positive mood) you see people constantly walking around or making small
noises. The study is basically stating that it would be harder for
positive moods to focus on the task at hand. In particular, happy people
may be more sensitive to the hedonic
consequences of message processing than sad people. Thus, positive
moods are predicted to lead to decreased processing only when thinking
about the message is mood threatening. In comparison, if message
processing allows a person to maintain or enhance a pleasant state then
positive moods need not lead to lower levels of message scrutiny than
negative moods.
It is assumed that initial information regarding the source either
confirms or disconfirms mood-congruent expectations. Specifically, a
positive mood may lead to more positive expectations concerning source
trustworthiness or likability than a negative mood. As a consequence,
people in a positive mood should be more surprised when they encounter
an untrustworthy or dislikable source rather than a trustworthy or
likable source.
Negative mood
Like positive moods, negative moods have important implications
for human mental and physical wellbeing. Moods are basic psychological
states that can occur as a reaction to an event or can surface for no
apparent external cause. Since there is no intentional object that
causes the negative mood, it has no specific start and stop date. It can
last for hours, days, weeks, or longer. Negative moods can manipulate
how individuals interpret and translate the world around them, and can
also direct their behavior.
Negative moods can affect an individual's judgment and perception of objects and events.
In a study done by Niedenthal and Setterland (1994), research showed
that individuals are tuned to perceive things that are congruent with
their current mood. Negative moods, mostly low-intense, can control how
humans perceive emotion-congruent objects and events. For example,
Niedenthal and Setterland used music to induce positive and negative
moods. Sad music was used as a stimulus to induce negative moods, and
participants labeled other things as negative. This proves that people's
current moods tend to affect their judgments and perceptions. These
negative moods may lead to problems in social relationships.
For example, one maladaptive negative mood regulation is an overactive
strategy in which individuals over dramatize their negative feelings in
order to provoke support and feedback from others and to guarantee their
availability. A second type of maladaptive negative mood regulation is a
disabling strategy in which individuals suppress their negative
feelings and distance themselves from others in order to avoid
frustrations and anxiety caused by others' unavailability.
Negative moods have been connected with depression, anxiety, aggression, poor self-esteem, physiological stress and decrease in sexual arousal.
In some individuals, there is evidence that depressed or anxious mood
may increase sexual interest or arousal. In general, men were more
likely than women to report increased sexual drive during negative mood
states. Negative moods are labeled as nonconstructive because it can
affect a person's ability to process information; making them focus
solely on the sender of a message, while people in positive moods will
pay more attention to both the sender and the context of a message. This
can lead to problems in social relationships with others.
Negative moods, such as anxiety, often lead individuals to misinterpret physical symptoms. According to Jerry Suls, a professor at the University of Iowa, people who are depressed and anxious tend to be in rumination. However, although an individual's affective states can influence the somatic changes, these individuals are not hypochondriacs.
Although negative moods are generally characterized as bad, not all negative moods are necessarily damaging. The Negative State Relief Model
states that human beings have an innate drive to reduce negative moods.
People can reduce their negative moods by engaging in any
mood-elevating behavior (called Mood repair strategies),
such as helping behavior, as it is paired with positive value such as
smiles and thank you. Thus negative mood increases helpfulness because
helping others can reduce one's own bad feelings.
Factors which affect mood
Lack of sleep
Sleep
has a complex, and as yet not fully elucidated, relationship with mood.
Most commonly if a person is sleep deprived he/she will become more
irritable, angry, more prone to stress, and less energized throughout
the day. "Studies have shown that even partial sleep deprivation has a
significant effect on mood. University of Pennsylvania researchers found
that subjects who were limited to only 4.5 hours of sleep a night for
one week reported feeling more stressed, angry, sad, and mentally
exhausted. When the subjects resumed normal sleep, they reported a
dramatic improvement in mood." Generally, evening oriented people, as compared to morning ones, show decreased energy and pleasantness and heightened tension.
However, in a subset of cases sleep deprivation can,
paradoxically, lead to increased energy and alertness and enhanced mood.
This effect is most marked in persons with an eveningeness type (so
called night-owls) and people suffering from depression. For this reason
it has sometimes been used as a treatment for major depressive disorder.
Nutrition
Traditional dietary patterns characterized by vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, and whole grains, as opposed to a western pattern diet characterized by processed foods, refined grains, sugary products, and beer were associated with lower odds for major depression or dysthymia (mood disorder) and for anxiety disorders in women. Red meat is found to be protective against mood and anxiety disorders. Fruits and vegetables are associated with positive mood, independent of demographic or lifestyle factors. Research indicates that alcohol and energy drinks are associated with mood changes.
Facial expression
Research studies
have indicated that voluntary facial expressions, such as smiling, can
produce effects on the body that are similar to those that result from
the actual emotion, such as happiness. Paul Ekman
and his colleagues have studied facial expressions of emotions and have
linked specific emotions to the movement of specific facial muscles.
Each basic emotion is associated with a distinctive facial expression.
Sensory feedback from the expression contributes to the emotional
feeling. Example: Smiling if you want to feel happy. Facial expressions
have a large effect on self-reported anger and happiness which then
affects your mood. Ekman has found that these expressions of emotion are
universal and recognizable across widely divergent cultures.
Mood disorders
Depression, chronic stress, bipolar disorder, etc. are considered
mood disorders. It has been suggested that such disorders result from
chemical imbalances in the brain's neurotransmitters, however some
research challenges this hypothesis.
Social mood
The idea of social mood as a "collectively shared state of mind" (Nofsinger 2005; Olson 2006) is attributed to Robert Prechter and his socionomics. The notion is used primarily in the field of economics (investments).
In sociology, philosophy, and psychology, crowd behavior is the formation of a common mood directed toward an object of attention.
