S. Queller et al., AMELIORATING SOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF POSITIVE MOOD - ENCOURAGING HAPPY PEOPLE TO PERCEIVE INTRAGROUP VARIABILITY, Journal of experimental social psychology, 32(4), 1996, pp. 361-386
Subjects in positive moods typically perceive groups as being more hom
ogeneous than do subjects in neutral moods (Stroessner & Mackle, 1992)
, Two experiments tested the idea that increasing the attention that h
appy perceivers paid to information that differentiated target group m
embers would eliminate this effect. In Experiment 1, salience of disti
nguishing information was manipulated by either attributing stereotype
-inconsistent information to a number of mildly atypical group members
or attributing the same stereotype-inconsistent information to a few
extremely atypical, and therefore highly salient, group members. In Ex
periment 2, the salience of distinguishing information was manipulated
by asking subjects to merely read descriptions of the group members o
r to sort them into subgroups on the basis of similarities and differe
nces. In both experiments, happy subjects perceived the group as more
homogeneous than did subjects in neutral moods when distinctive inform
ation was not made salient, but perceived the group in a manner simila
r to their neutral mood counterparts when the distinctive information
was made salient. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.