Research Focus

Misattributing Arousal

If you think a bit about your own experiences of different emotions, and if you consider the equation that suggests that emotions are represented by both arousal and cognition, you might start to wonder how much was determined by each. That is, do we know what emotion we are experiencing by monitoring our feelings (arousal) or by monitoring our thoughts (cognition)?

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962) addressed this question in a well-known social psychological experiment. Schachter and Singer believed that the cognitive part of the emotion was critical—in fact, they believed that the arousal that we are experiencing could be interpreted as any emotion, provided we had the right label for it. Thus they hypothesized that if individuals are experiencing arousal for which they have no immediate explanation, they will “label” this state in terms of the cognitions that are most accessible in the environment. On the other hand, they argued that people who already have a clear label for their arousal would have no need to search for a relevant label and therefore should not experience an emotion.

In the research experiment, the male participants were told that they would be participating in a study on the effects of a new drug, called “suproxin,” on vision. On the basis of this cover story, the men were injected with a shot of epinephrine, a drug that produces physiological arousal. The idea was to give all the participants arousal; epinephrine normally creates feelings of tremors, flushing, and accelerated breathing in people.

Then, according to random assignment to conditions, the men were told that the drug would make them feel certain ways. The men in the epinephrine-informed condition were told the truth about the effects of the drug—they were told that other participants had experienced tremors and that their hands would start to shake, their hearts would start to pound, and their faces might get warm and flushed. The participants in the epinephrine-uninformed condition, however, were told something untrue—that their feet would feel numb, that they would have an itching sensation over parts of their body, and that they might get a slight headache. The idea was to make some of the men think that the arousal they were experiencing was caused by the drug (the informed condition), whereas others would be unsure where the arousal came from (the uninformed condition).

Then the men were left alone with a confederate who they thought had received the same injection. While they were waiting for the experiment (which was supposedly about vision) to begin, the confederate behaved in a wild and crazy (Schachter and Singer called it “euphoric”) manner. He wadded up spitballs, flew paper airplanes, and played with a hula hoop. He kept trying to get the participants to join in his games. Then right before the vision experiment was to begin, the participants were asked to indicate their current emotional states on a number of scales. One of the emotions they were asked about was euphoria.

If you are following the story here, you will realize what was expected—that the men who had a label for their arousal (the informed group) would not be experiencing much emotion—they had a label already available for their arousal. The men in the misinformed group, on the other hand, were expected to be unsure about the source of the arousal—they needed to find an explanation for their arousal, and the confederate provided one. Indeed, as you can see in Figure 2.17, “Misattributing Emotion,” this is just what the researchers found.

Then Schachter and Singer did another part of the study, using new participants. Everything was exactly the same except for the behavior of the confederate. Rather than being euphoric, he acted angry. He complained about having to complete the questionnaire he had been asked to do, indicating that the questions were stupid and too personal. He ended up tearing up the questionnaire that he was working on, yelling, “I don’t have to tell them that!” Then he grabbed his books and stormed out of the room.

What do you think happened in this condition? The answer, of course, is, exactly the same thing—the misinformed participants experienced more anger than did the informed participants. The idea is that because cognitions are such strong determinants of emotional states, the same state of physiological arousal could be labeled in many different ways, depending entirely on the label provided by the social situation. We will revisit the effects of misattribution of arousal when we consider sources of romantic attraction.

 

 

Figure 2.17 Misattributing Emotion. The results of an experiment by Schachter and Singer (1962) supported the two-factor theory of emotion. The participants who did not have a clear label for their arousal were more likely to take on the emotion of the confederate.

So, our attribution of the sources of our arousal will often strongly influence the emotional states we experience in social situations. How else might our cognition influence our affect? Another example is demonstrated in framing effects [Production: Please bold font in OER], which occur when people’s judgments about different options are affected by whether they are framed as resulting in gains or losses. In general, people feel more positive about options that are framed positively, as opposed to negatively. For example, individuals seeking to eat healthily tend to feel more positive about a product described as 95% fat free than one described as 5% fat, even though the information in the two messages is the same. In the same way, people tend to prefer treatment options that stress survival rates as opposed to death rates. Framing effects have been demonstrated in regards to numerous social issues, including judgments relating to charitable donations (Chang & Lee, 2010) and green environmental practices (Tu, Kao, & Tu, 2013). In reference to our chapter case study, they have also been implicated in decisions about risk in financial contexts and in the explanation of market behaviors (Kirchler, Maciejovsky, & Weber, 2010).

Social psychologists have also studied how we use our cognitive faculties to try to control our emotions in social situations, to prevent them from letting our behavior get out of control. The process of setting goals and using our cognitive and affective capacities to reach those goals is known as self-regulation [Production: Please bold font in OER], and a good part of self-regulation involves regulating our emotions. To be the best people that we possibly can, we have to work hard at it. Succeeding at school, at work, and at our relationships with others takes a lot of effort. When we are successful at self-regulation, we are able to move toward or meet the goals that we set for ourselves. When we fail at self-regulation, we are not able to meet those goals. People who are better able to regulate their behaviors and emotions are more successful in their personal and social encounters (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992), and thus self-regulation is a skill we should seek to master.

A significant part of our skill in self-regulation comes from the deployment of cognitive strategies to try to harness positive emotions and to overcome more challenging ones. For example, to achieve our goals we often have to stay motivated and to be persistent in the face of setbacks. If, for example, an employee has already gone for a promotion at work and has been unsuccessful twice before, this could lead him or her to feel very negative about his or her competence and the possibility of trying for promotion again, should an opportunity arise. In these types of challenging situations, the strategy of cognitive reappraisal [Production: Please bold font in OER] can be a very effective way of coping. Cognitive reappraisal involves altering an emotional state by reinterpreting the meaning of the triggering situation or stimulus. For example, if another promotion position does comes up, the employee could reappraise it as an opportunity to be successful and focus on how the lessons learned in previous attempts could strengthen his or her candidacy this time around. In this case, the employee would likely feel more positive towards the opportunity and choose to go after it.

Using strategies like cognitive reappraisal to self-regulate negative emotional states and to exert greater self-control in challenging situations has some important positive outcomes. Consider, for instance, research by Walter Mischel and his colleagues (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). In their studies, they had four- and five-year-old children sit at a table in front of a yummy snack, such as a chocolate chip cookie or a marshmallow. The children were told that they could eat the snack right away if they wanted to. However, they were also told that if they could wait for just a couple of minutes, they’d be able to have two snacks—both the one in front of them and another just like it. However, if they ate the one that was in front of them before the time was up, they would not get a second.

Mischel found that some children were able to self-regulate—they were able to use their cognitive abilities to override the impulse to seek immediate gratification in order to obtain a greater reward at a later time. Other children, of course, were not—they just ate the first snack right away. Furthermore, the inability to delay gratification seemed to occur in a spontaneous and emotional manner, without much thought. The children who could not resist simply grabbed the cookie because it looked so yummy, without being able to cognitively stop themselves (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999; Strack & Deutsch, 2007).

The ability to self-regulate in childhood has important consequences later in life. When Mischel followed up on the children in his original study, he found that those who had been able to self-regulate as children grew up to have some highly positive characteristics—they got better SAT scores, were rated by their friends as more socially adept, and were found to cope with frustration and stress better than those children who could not resist the tempting first cookie at a young age. Effective self-regulation is therefore an important key to success in life (Ayduk et al., 2000; Eigsti et al., 2006; Mischel, Ayduk, & Mendoza-Denton, 2003).

Self-regulation is difficult, though, particularly when we are tired, depressed, or anxious, and it is under these conditions that we more easily lose our self-control and fail to live up to our goals (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). If you are tired and worried about an upcoming test, you may find yourself getting angry and taking it out on your friend, even though your friend really hasn’t done anything to deserve it and you don’t really want to be angry. It is no secret that we are more likely to fail at our diets when we are under a lot of stress or at night when we are tired. In these challenging situations, and when our resources are particularly drained, the ability to use cognitive strategies to successfully self-regulate becomes more even more important, and difficult.

Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister (1998) conducted a study to demonstrate that emotion regulation—that is, either increasing or decreasing our emotional responses—takes work. They speculated that self-control was like a muscle—it just gets tired when it is used too much. In their experiment, they asked their participants to watch a short movie about environmental disasters involving radioactive waste and their negative effects on wildlife. The scenes included sick and dying animals, which were very upsetting. According to random assignment to conditions, one group (the increase-emotional-response condition) was told to really get into the movie and to express emotions in response to it, a second group was to hold back and decrease emotional responses (the decrease-emotional-response condition), and a third (control) group received no instructions on emotion regulation.

Both before and after the movie, the experimenter asked the participants to engage in a measure of physical strength by squeezing as hard as they could on a hand-grip exerciser, a device used for building up hand muscles. The experimenter put a piece of paper in the grip and timed how long the participants could hold the grip together before the paper fell out. Table 2.2, “Self-Control Takes Effort,”  shows the results of this study. It seems that emotion regulation does indeed take effort because the participants who had been asked to control their emotions showed significantly less ability to squeeze the hand grip after the movie than before. Thus the effort to regulate emotional responses seems to have consumed resources, leaving the participants less capacity to make use of in performing the hand-grip task.

Table 2.2 Self-Control Takes Effort
Condition	Handgrip strength before movie	Handgrip strength after movie	Change
Increase emotional response	78.73	54.63	–25.1
No emotional control	60.09	58.52	–1.57
Decrease emotional response	70.74	52.25	–18.49
Participants who had been required to either express or refrain from expressing their emotions had less strength to squeeze a hand grip after doing so. Data are from Muraven et al. (1998).

In other studies, people who had to resist the temptation to eat chocolates and cookies, who made important decisions, or who were forced to conform to others all performed more poorly on subsequent tasks that took energy in comparison to people who had not been emotionally taxed. After controlling their emotions, they gave up on subsequent tasks sooner and failed to resist new temptations (Vohs & Heatherton, 2000).

Can we improve our emotion regulation? It turns out that training in self-regulation—just like physical training—can help. Students who practiced doing difficult tasks, such as exercising, avoiding swearing, or maintaining good posture, were later found to perform better in laboratory tests of self-regulation (Baumeister, Gailliot, DeWall, & Oaten, 2006; Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007; Oaten & Cheng, 2006), such as maintaining a diet or completing a puzzle.

The Power of Positive Cognition

You have probably heard about “the power of positive thinking”—the idea that thinking positively helps people meet their goals and keeps them healthy, happy, and able to effectively cope with the negative events that they experience. It turns out that positive thinking really works. People who think positively about their future, who believe that they can control their outcomes, and who are willing to open up and share with others are happier, healthier people (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

The power of positive thinking comes in different forms, but they are all helpful. Notwithstanding the potential risks of wildly optimistic beliefs about the future, outlined earlier in this chapter, some researchers have studied the effects of having an optimistic explanatory style [Production: Please bold font in OER], a way of explaining current outcomes affecting the self in a way that leads to an expectation of positive future outcomes, and have found that optimists are happier and have less stress (Carver & Scheier, 2009). Others have focused on self-efficacy [Production: Please bold font in OER], the belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes. People with high self-efficacy feel more confident to respond to environmental and other threats in an active, constructive way—by getting information, talking to friends, and attempting to face and reduce the difficulties they are experiencing. These people, too, are better able to ward off their stresses in comparison with people with less self-efficacy (Thompson, 2009).

Self-efficacy helps in part because it leads us to perceive that we can control the potential stressors that may affect us. Workers who have control over their work environment (e.g., by being able to move furniture and control distractions) experience less stress, as do patients in nursing homes who are able to choose their everyday activities (Rodin, 1986). Glass, Reim, and Singer (1971) found in a study that participants who believed they could stop a loud noise experienced less stress than those who did not think they could, even though the people who had the option never actually used it. The ability to control our outcomes may help explain why animals and people who have higher social status live longer (Sapolsky, 2005). Importantly, it is possible to learn to think more positively, and doing so can be beneficial to our moods and behaviors. For example, Antoni et al. (2001) found that pessimistic cancer patients who were given training in optimism reported more optimistic outlooks after the training and were less fatigued after their treatments.

[Production: please add Activity 5 text as new content – H5P part to be created by Media and added:]

Activity 5: Affect and Cognition

Introduction

To test your learning of some key concepts from this section, read through each of the following scenarios related to affect and cognition.

Instructions

Match up the following scenarios with the appropriate concept by dragging the appropriate concept into each box. Which concept do you think is most clearly shown in each situation?

[Placeholder for H5P, to be created by Media]

 

After watching a romantic movie, Sam runs into an old friend and feels unusually excited to see them. Sam thinks their excitement is due to meeting the friend, but it’s really because the romantic movie increased their emotional arousal. This is an example of:__________. (Misattribution of arousal)

While driving, Lisa encounters heavy traffic and starts to feel frustrated. Instead of letting the frustration grow, she tells herself, “This is just temporary. I’ll get home soon and can relax.” By changing her perspective, Lisa is practicing:__________. (Cognitive reappraisal)

Tom often views challenges in his life as opportunities rather than setbacks. For example, when he doesn’t get a promotion, he tells himself that it’s a chance to improve his skills. Tom is demonstrating:__________. (Optimistic explanatory style)

Sarah is in a great mood after getting a promotion. When she goes shopping later that day, she believes that every purchase she makes is a great decision because she’s feeling so positive. Sarah is relying on her emotions to make decisions, illustrating the:__________. (Affect heuristic)

During a difficult exam, Chris feels anxious. However, instead of letting the anxiety control him, Chris takes deep breaths and focuses on calming himself to perform better. Chris is engaging in:__________. (Self-regulation)

Jessica recently went through a breakup and has been feeling sad. She notices that when she listens to music, she tends to choose slow, melancholic songs that match her current emotional state. This behavior reflects the principle of:__________. (Mood congruence effects)

[Production: end of activity text]

Cognition About Affect: The Case of Affective Forecasting

Another way in which our cognition intersects with our emotions occurs when we engage in affective forecasting [Production: Please bold font in OER], which describes our attempts to predict how future events will make us feel. For example, we may decide to apply for a promotion at work with a larger salary partly based on forecasting that the increased income will make us happier. [Production: please revise sentence with the following edit indicated:] In this section’s required reading, you will learn about this process of affective forecasting and how it is often inaccurate. Several explanations for why we are often inaccurate in predicting our future emotions will be explained and discussed.

[Production: please add Activity 6 text as new content]

Activity 6: Required Reading – Wilson & Gilbert (2005)

Introduction

Have you ever thought, “once I get that new car/job/house, things will be so much better,” only to realize that your feelings weren’t significantly changed after the event occurred? Why are we sometimes wrong about what will positively impact our well-being; don’t we know ourselves well enough to know what will make us happy?

 

In this article about affecting forecasting, Wilson & Gilbert (2005) provide several explanations for why we are often inaccurate in predicting our future emotions.

Instructions

As you read, recall the strategies for reading a social psychology journal article outlined in the Jordan & Zanna (1999) chapter included in Unit 1, which you can find the Resources section.

 

[Production: please bold font] The content in this article will be covered on the final exam. Be sure to take notes about the process of concept activation, factors influencing activation, spreading activation, types of concepts that can be activated, and the effects of concept activation.

 

The Wilson & Gilbert (2005) article, Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want, is available in the Resources section in Moodle or through the TRU Library directly using this permalink.

 

[Production: please bold font] Please note: While the full article is 50 pages long, you are required to read only pages 388-407.

 

This reading is 20 pages long, so take breaks when you need to and pace yourself.

 

[end of learning activity 6]

[Production: please add Activity 7 as new content]

Activity 7: Topic 2 – Affect and Cognition Practice Quiz

Introduction

Try these practice questions to see how well you have retained some key ideas from this section.

Instructions

You can attempt these quiz questions as many times as you like. If you find you are having difficulty with a particular question, try checking the feedback and reviewing the recommended sections.

[Production: placeholder for H5P Topic 2 quiz]

[Media: Please create H5P multiple choice quiz, unlimited attempts, with provided feedback for each question on wrong answers only]

What is “affective forecasting”?

The ability to predict the weather based on emotions

The process of predicting one’s future emotional states

The process of predicting others’ emotions

The ability to control one’s future emotions

[Media: feedback for wrong answers:] Not quite! Try reviewing the required reading or the topic summary.

 

What is the main reason people often mispredict their future emotional reactions?

Lack of information

Overemphasis on the wrong factors

The impact bias

Underestimating the speed of emotional recovery

[Media: feedback for wrong answers:] Not quite! Try reviewing the required reading or the topic summary.

 

What is the “impact bias” in affective forecasting?

The tendency to underestimate the intensity and duration of future emotions

The tendency to overestimate the intensity and duration of future emotions

The tendency to accurately predict future emotions

The ability to control emotional responses

[Media: feedback for wrong answers:] Not quite! Try reviewing the required reading or the topic summary.

 

Which of the following is an example of “immune neglect”?

Ignoring physical health during emotional distress

Underestimating one’s ability to psychologically recover from negative events

Overestimating the likelihood of positive future events

Focusing too much on future happiness

[Media: feedback for wrong answers:] Not quite! Try reviewing the required reading or the topic summary.

 

How do Wilson and Gilbert suggest people can improve their affective forecasting accuracy?

By gathering more information about future events

By considering how they’ve reacted to similar events in the past

By avoiding thinking about the future altogether

By focusing solely on the positive aspects of future events

[Media: feedback for wrong answers:] Not quite! Try reviewing the required reading or the topic summary.

[end of Topic 2 quiz content]

[Production: Please include the following bold text in a text box in the OER:]

This is the end of the assigned reading for Topic 2: Affect and Cognition. Take a break. Once you are ready to continue, go to Moodle to begin Topic 3: Memory.

[Production: end of textbox]

 

While it is true that we do need money to afford food and adequate shelter for ourselves and our families, after this minimum level of wealth is reached, more money does not generally buy more happiness (Easterlin, 2005). For instance, citizens in many countries today have several times the buying power they had in previous decades, and yet overall reported happiness has not typically increased (Layard, 2005).

Psychologists have found that our affective forecasting is often not very accurate (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). For one, we tend to overestimate our emotional reactions to events. Although we think that positive and negative events that we might experience will make a huge difference in our lives, and although these changes do make at least some difference in well-being, they tend to be less influential than we think they are going to be. Positive events tend to make us feel good, but their effects wear off pretty quickly, and the same is true for negative events. For instance, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) interviewed people who had won more than $50,000 in a lottery and found that they were not happier than they had been in the past and were also not happier than a control group of similar people who had not won the lottery. On the other hand, the researchers found that individuals who were paralyzed as a result of accidents were not as unhappy as might be expected.

How can this possibly be? There are several reasons. For one, people are resilient; they bring their coping skills into play when negative events occur, and this makes them feel better. Second, most people do not continually experience very positive or very negative affect over a long period of time but, rather, adapt to their current circumstances. Just as we enjoy the second chocolate bar we eat less than we enjoy the first, as we experience more and more positive outcomes in our daily lives, we habituate to them and our well-being returns to a more moderate level (Small, Zatorre, Dagher, Evans, & Jones-Gotman, 2001). Another reason we may predict our happiness incorrectly is that our social comparisons change when our own status changes as a result of new events. People who are wealthy compare themselves with other wealthy people, people who are poor tend to compare themselves with other poor people, and people who are ill tend to compare themselves with other ill people. When our comparisons change, our happiness levels are correspondingly influenced. And when people are asked to predict their future emotions, they may focus only on the positive or negative event they are asked about and forget about all the other things that won’t change. Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, and Axsom (2000) found that when people were asked to focus on all the more regular things that they will still be doing in the future (e.g., working, going to church, socializing with family and friends), their predictions about how something really good or bad would influence them were less extreme.

If pleasure is fleeting, at least misery shares some of the same quality. We might think we can’t be happy if something terrible were to happen to us, such as losing a partner, but after a period of adjustment, most people find that happiness levels return to prior levels (Bonanno et al., 2002). Health concerns tend to decrease subjective well-being, and those with a serious disability or illness show slightly lowered mood levels. But even when health is compromised, levels of misery are lower than most people expect (Lucas, 2007). For instance, although individuals with disabilities have more concern about health, safety, and acceptance in the community, they still experience overall positive happiness levels (Marinić & Brkljačić, 2008). It has been estimated that taken together, our wealth, health, and life circumstances account for only 15% to 20% of well-being scores (Argyle, 1999). Clearly, the main ingredient in happiness lies beyond, or perhaps beneath, external factors. For some further perspectives on our affective forecasting abilities, and their implications for the study of happiness, see Daniel Gilbert’s popular TED Talk.

Having reviewed some of the literature on the interplay between social cognition and affect, it is clear that we must be mindful of how our thoughts and moods shape one another, and, in turn, affect our evaluations of our social worlds.

Key Takeaways

Our current affective states profoundly shape our social cognition.

Our cognitive processes, in turn, influence our affective states.

Our ability to forecast our future emotional states is often less accurate than we think.

The better we understand these links between our cognition and affect, the better we can harness both to reach our social goals.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

Describe a time when you feel that the affect heuristic played a big part in a social judgment or decision that you made. What impact did this heuristic have? Looking back, how sound was the judgment or decision that you made and why?

Outline a situation where you experienced either mood-dependent memory or the mood-congruence effect. What effects did this then have on your affect and social cognition?

Describe a situation where you feel that you may have misattributed the source of an emotional state you experienced. Who or what did you misattribute the arousal to and why? In hindsight, who or what do you think was the actual source of your arousal? With this knowledge, outline how the emotion you experienced at the time may have been different if you had made a correct source attribution.

Outline a situation that you interpreted in an optimistic way and describe how you feel that this then affected your future outcomes.

Describe an instance where you feel that your affective forecasting about how a future event would make you feel was particularly inaccurate. Try to identify the reasons why your predictions were so far off the mark.

 References

Antoni, M. H., Lehman, J. M., Klibourn, K. M., Boyers, A. E., Culver, J. L., Alferi, S. M., Kilbourn, K. (2001). Cognitive-behavioral stress management intervention decreases the prevalence of depression and enhances benefit finding among women under treatment for early-stage breast cancer. Health Psychology, 20(1), 20–32.

Argyle, M. (1999). Causes and correlates of happiness. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well being: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Ayduk, O., Mendoza-Denton, R., Mischel, W., Downey, G., Peake, P. K., & Rodriguez, M. (2000). Regulating the interpersonal self: Strategic self-regulation for coping with rejection sensitivity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 776–792.

Baumeister, R. F., Gailliot, M., DeWall, C. N., & Oaten, M. (2006). Self-regulation and personality: How interventions increase regulatory success, and how depletion moderates the effects of traits on behavior. Journal of Personality, 74,1773–1801.

Baumeister, R. F., Schmeichel, B., & Vohs, K. D. (2007). Self-regulation and the executive function: The self as controlling agent. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Guilford.

Bodenhausen, G. V., Sheppard, L., & Kramer, G. P. (1994). Negative affect and social perception: The differential impact of anger and sadness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 45-62.

Bonanno, G. A., Wortman, C. B., Lehman, D., Tweed, R., Sonnega, J., Carr, D., et al. (2002). Resilience to loss, chronic grief, and their pre-bereavement predictors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1150–1164.

Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917–927.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2009). Optimism. In M. R. Leary & R. H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of individual differences in social behavior (pp. 330–342). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Chang, C., & Lee, Y. (2010). Effects of message framing, vividness congruency and statistical framing on responses to charity advertising. International Journal Of Advertising: The Quarterly Review Of Marketing Communications, 29(2), 195-220. doi:10.2501/S0265048710201129

Clark, M. S., & Isen, A. M. (1982). Toward understanding the relationship between feeling states and social behavior. In A. H. Hastorf & A. M. Isen (Eds.), Cognitive social psychology (pp. 73–108). New York. NY: Elsevier/North-Holland.

Clore, G. L., Schwarz, N., & Conway, M. (1993). Affective causes and consequences of social information processing. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (eds.), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy? American Psychologist, 54(10), 821–827.

Easterlin, R. (2005). Feeding the illusion of growth and happiness: A reply to Hagerty and Veenhoven. Social Indicators Research, 74(3), 429–443. doi:10.1007/ s11205-004-6170-z

Eigsti, I.-M., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Dadlani, M. B., et al. (2006). Predicting cognitive control from preschool to late adolescence and young adulthood. Psychological Science, 17(6), 478–484.

Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1992). Emotion, regulation, and the development of social competence. In Emotion and social behavior (pp. 119–150). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Garcia-Marques, T., Mackie, D. M., Claypool, H. M., & Garcia-Marques, L. (2004). Positivity can cue familiarity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 585-593.

Glass, D. C., Reim, B., & Singer, J. E. (1971). Behavioral consequences of adaptation to controllable and uncontrollable noise. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7(2), 244–257.

Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1997). Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(1), 95–103.

Isen, A. M., & Levin, P. F. (1972). Effect of feeling good on helping: Cookies and kindness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21, 384–388.

Isen, A. M., Shalker, T. E., Clark, M., & Karp, L. (1978). Affect, accessibility of material in memory and behavior: A cognitive loop? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1–12.

Ito, T., Chiao, K., Devine, P. G., Lorig, T., & Cacioppo, J. (2006). The influence of facial feedback on race bias. Psychological Science, 17, 256–61.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York, NY: Dover.

Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist 58: 697–720. doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.58.9.697

Kahneman D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Kahneman, D., & Frederick, S. (2002). Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 49-81). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Keltner, D., Locke, K. D., & Audrain, P. C. (1993). The influence of attributions on the relevance of negative feelings to personal satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19(1), 21–29.

Kirchler, E., Maciejovsky, B., & Weber, M. (2010). Framing effects, selective information and market behavior: An experimental analysis. In B. Bruce (Ed.) , Handbook of behavioral finance (pp. 7-24). Northampton, MA US: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a new science. London: Allen Lane.

Lazarus, R. S. (1984). On the primacy of cognition. American Psychologist, 39(2), 124-129. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.39.2.124

Lomax, C. L., & Lam, D. (2011). Investigation into activation of dysfunctional schemas in euthymic bipolar disorder following positive mood induction. British Journal Of Clinical Psychology, 50(2), 115-126. doi:10.1348/014466510X497841

Lucas, R. (2007). Long-term disability is associated with lasting changes in subjective well-being: Evidence from two nationally representative longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(4), 717–730.

Marinić, M., & Brkljačić, T. (2008). Love over gold: The correlation of happiness level with some life satisfaction factors between persons with and without physical disability. Journal of Developmental & Physical Disabilities, 20(6), 527–540. doi:10.1007/s10882-008-9115-7

Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106(1), 3–19.

Mischel, W., Ayduk, O., & Mendoza-Denton, R. (Eds.). (2003). Sustaining delay of gratification over time: A hot-cool systems perspective. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933–938.

Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247–259.

Muraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Self-control as a limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 774–789.

Oaten, M., & Cheng, K. (2006). Longitudinal gains in self-regulation from regular physical exercise. British Journal of Health Psychology, 11, 717–733.

Oatley, K., Parrott, W. G., Smith, C., & Watts, F. (2011). Cognition and emotion over twenty-five years. Cognition and Emotion, 25(8), 1341-1348.

Rivera, L. A. (2012). Diversity within reach: Recruitment versus hiring in elite firms. Annals Of The American Academy Of Political And Social Science, 639(1), 71-90. doi:10.1177/0002716211421112

Rodin, J. (1986). Aging and health: Effects of the sense of control. Science, 233(4770), 1271–1276.

Ruder, M., & Bless, H. (2003). Mood and the reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 20-32.

Russell, J. A. (1980) A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161–1178.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2005). The influence of social hierarchy on primate health. Science, 308(5722), 648–652.

Savitsky, K., Medvec, V. H., Charlton, A. E., & Gilovich, T. (1998). “What, me worry?” Arousal, misattribution and the effect of temporal distance on confidence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(5), 529–536.

Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.

Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychological Review, 69(5), 379–399.

Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513–523.

Slovic P, Finucane M, Peters E, MacGregor DG (2002) The affect heuristic. In: Gilovich T, Griffin DW, Kahneman D, editors. Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 397–420.

Small, D. M., Zatorre, R. J., Dagher, A., Evans, A. C., & Jones-Gotman, M. (2001). Changes in brain activity related to eating chocolate. Brain, 124(9), 1720.

Strack, F., & Deutsch, R. (2007). The role of impulse in social behavior. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Guilford.

Strack, F., Martin, L. L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 768–777.

Stepper, S., & Strack, F. (1993). Proprioceptive determinants of emotional and nonemotional feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(2), 211–220.

Thompson, S. C. (2009). The role of personal control in adaptive functioning. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Oxford handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp. 271–278). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Tu, J., Kao, T., & Tu, Y. (2013). Influences of framing effect and green message on advertising effect. Social Behavior And Personality, 41(7), 1083-1098.

Vohs, K. D., & Heatherton, T. F. (2000). Self-regulatory failure: A resource depletion approach. Psychological Science, 11, 249–254.

Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131–134.

Wilson, T. D., Wheatley, T., Meyers, J. M., Gilbert, D. T., & Axsom, D. (2000). Focalism: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 821–836.

8