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Mood effects on cooperation in small groups: Does positive mood simply lead to more cooperation?

Hertel, Guido, Neuhof, Jochen, Theuer, Thomas, Kerr, Norbert L. (2000) Mood effects on cooperation in small groups: Does positive mood simply lead to more cooperation? Cognition & Emotion, 14 (4). pp. 441-472. ISSN 0269-9931. (doi:10.1080/026999300402754) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:42457)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026999300402754

Abstract

The hypothesis that happy persons are more cooperative than sad persons has become a popular presumption in social and applied psychology. However, empirical evidence for this notion is less clear than often assumed. We argue that mood affects the process of decision making rather than (or in addition to) affecting the level of cooperation, increasing heuristic processing when persons feel good or secure, but leading to more systematic processing when persons feel sad or insecure. As a consequence, feeling states should moderate persons' reactions to heuristic cues, as for example the expected or perceived behaviour of others. Two experiments are reported varying feeling states, descriptive social norms, and the perceived behaviour of other group members in a chicken dilemma game. As expected, happy (Experiment 1) or secure participants (Experiment 2) showed shorter decision latencies and heuristically imitated others' behaviour in the chicken dilemma, whereas sad or insecure participants exhibited more systematic and rational behaviour, tending to defect when others' cooperation was high, but to increase their investment for the common when others' cooperation was low. No main effect of mood on cooperation occurred in either experiment.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/026999300402754
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: M.L. Barnoux
Date Deposited: 19 Aug 2014 13:37 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:16 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/42457 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Kerr, Norbert L..

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