ASYMMETRY AND TIME SPAN OF EXPERIMENTALLY-INDUCED MOOD

This study describes a procedure for experimentally inducing positive and negative mood states in the laboratory. Following Seibert and Elli s' procedure (1991), our purpose was to induce sad or happy moods in s ubjects having read self-referencing sentences. The results point to t he existence of an emotional asymmetry, namely, a happy mood is more s hort-lived than a sad mood. This result is discussed in terms of a dif ference in the cognitive effort involved in emotional situations resul ting either from a sad or from a happy feeling.