MOOD AND THE USE OF SCRIPTS - DOES A HAPPY MOOD REALLY LEAD TO MINDLESSNESS

The authors tested whether happy moods increase, and sad moods decreas e, reliance on general knowledge structures. Participants in happy, ne utral, or sad moods listened to a ''going-out-for-dinner'' story. Happ y participants made more intrusion errors in recognition than did sad participants, with neutral mood participants falling in between (Exper iments 1 and 2). Happy participants outperformed sad ones when they pe rformed a secondary task while listening to the story (Experiment 2), but only when the amount of script-inconsistent information was small (Experiment 3). This pattern of findings indicates higher reliance on general knowledge structures under happy rather than sad moods. It is incompatible with the assumption that happy moods decrease either cogn itive capacity or processing motivation in general, which would predic t impaired secondary-task performance.