MOOD AND THE CORRECTION OF POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES

The present research examined the effects of sadness on the correction of social stereotypes. Participants who either were or were not induc ed to feel sad were asked to form an impression of a single individual who belonged to a group that had either stereotypically positive or n egative implications. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that sad people corre cted for their negative, but not for their positive stereotypes. Exper iment 3 demonstrated that this asymmetry was not due to stereotype val ence per se but to whether the stereotype was perceived as an inapprop riate basis for judgment. A model is presented that suggests that sad people do not simply ignore category-based information, but rather cor rect for their stereotypes only when they are perceived as inappropria te, which tends to be more often the case if the stereotype is negativ e than if it is positive. The implications of the present results for 4 extant models of mood and information processing are discussed.