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Mood effects on emotion recognition

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Abstract

Mood affects memory and social judgments. However, findings are inconsistent with regard to how mood affects emotion recognition: For sad moods, general performance decrements in emotion recognition have been reported, as well as an emotion specific bias, such as better recognition of sad facial expressions compared to happy expressions (negative bias). Far less research has been conducted on the influence of happy moods on emotion recognition. We primed 93 participants with happy, sad, or neutral moods and had them perform an emotion recognition task. Results showed a negative bias for participants in sad moods and a positive bias for participants in happy moods. Sad and happy moods hampered the recognition of mood-incongruent expressions; the recognition of mood-congruent expressions was not affected by moods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Psychology du Travail et des Organisations, Université de Neuchâtel, Rue de la Maladière, 23, 2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Petra Claudia Schmid & Marianne Schmid Mast

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  1. Petra Claudia Schmid
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  2. Marianne Schmid Mast
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Correspondence to Petra Claudia Schmid.

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Schmid, P.C., Schmid Mast, M. Mood effects on emotion recognition. Motiv Emot 34, 288–292 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-010-9170-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-010-9170-0

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