Self-regulation by mentally contrasting a positive future with negative reality leads people to differentiate in their goal commitments: They commit to goals when expectations of success are high and let go when expectations of success are low. On the contrary, when indulging in the positive future or dwelling on negative reality, people fail to consider expectations of success and do not form ...

The authors investigated 2 broad issues: (a) across- and within-individual relationships between mood and job satisfaction and (b) spillover in moods experienced at work and at home. Using an experience-sampling methodology, they collected multisource data from a sample of 74 working individuals. Multilevel results revealed that job satisfaction affected positive mood after work and that the sp...

This study examined the influence of anticipated social interaction on the regulation of moods. Study 1 induced happy and sad moods through exposure to music. All participants expected to perform a second, unrelated experimental task either by themselves of with another participant. Participants who expected to do the task alone subsequently selected positive and negative news stories equally, ...

Positive moods promote a focus on the forest (global focus) and negative moods, a focus on the trees (local focus). Is this well-established link fixed or variable? Does it reflect a direct influence of affect, as usually assumed, or is it frequently observed simply because a global perspective is often dominant? If affect serves as information about the value of currently accessible inclinatio...

Observed in 2 initial studies was converging evidence that helping improves the helpers' moods and self-evaluations. In these studies Ss induced to help showed improved moods and self-evaluations relative to Ss not given an opportunity to help. A 3rd study examined the moderating effects of desired relationship type on reactions to having helped. In this study Ss were led to desire either a com...

Let X1, X2, . . . be independent identically distributed nonnegative random variables. Wald’s identity states that the random sum ST := X1 + · · · + XT has expectation ET ·EX1 provided T is a stopping time. We prove here that for any 1 < α ≤ 2, if T is an arbitrary nonnegative random variable, then ST has finite expectation provided that X1 has finite α-moment and T has finite 1/(α− 1)-moment. ...

Recent research suggests that the recall of positive memories plays an important role in mood regulation. In this study, the authors examined the ability of currently depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants to regulate sad mood through the recall of positive memories or through distraction. Although improvement in mood was found for all participants in response to distra...