0.5 How do emotion, attention, thought, and arousal work together  (Page 14/17)

A major development in affect-cognition research in the 1980s was the realization that in addition to influencing the content of cognition - informational effects - affect may also influence the process of cognition; that is, how people think about social information. It was initially thought that people in a positive mood tend to think more rapidly and perhaps superficially; reach decisions more quickly; use less information; avoid demanding and systematic processing; and are more confident about their decisions. Negative affect, in turn, was assumed to trigger a more systematic, analytic, and vigilant processing style. Clark, M. S., + Isen, A. M. (1982). Towards understanding the relationship between feeling states and social behavior. In A. H. Hastorf + A. M. Isen (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed.), New Jersey: Erlbaum. Isen, A. M. (1984). Towards understanding the role of affect in cognition. In R. S. Wyer + T. K. Srull (Eds.) Handbook of Social Cognition (Vol 3. pp. 179-236). Hillsdale, Nj: Erlbaum. Isen, A. M. (1987). Positive affect, cognitive processes and social behavior. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 203-253). New York: Academic Press. Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informational and motivation functions of affective states. In E. T. Higgins + R. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 527-561). New York: Guilford Press. More recent work showed that positive affect can also produce distinct processing advantages, as people are more likely to adopt more creative, open, constructive, and inclusive thinking styles. Bless, H. (2000). The interplay of affect and cognition: The mediating role of general knowledge structures. In J.P. Forgas (Ed.). Feeling and Thinking: The role of affect in social cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fiedler, K. (2000). Towards an integrative account of affect and cognition phenomena using the BIAS computer algorithm. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.) Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition New York: Cambridge University Press. It now appears that positive affect promotes a more schema-based, top-down, and generative processing style, whereas negative affect produces a more bottom-up and externally focused processing strategy. This processing dichotomy has close links with the fundamental distinction between promotion-oriented vs prevention-oriented processing developed by Tory Higgins, a distinction that has deep roots in evolutionary theorizing as well as classic conditioning accounts.

It makes sense that when someone is in a good mood, their thoughts are also going to be more positive. They are less nervous, and not worried about the environment around them, also, they don't need to think everything through from the bottom up but instead can generalize and think more casually. When positive, people can even think rapidly and superficially. They are more relaxed. Pain causes people to do work - it puts them in a more demanding state. They have to think harder, and they are more vigilant in their thinking.