Mood and Perception: Do Others Look Better When You are Aroused

1
Mood and Perception Do Others Look Better When
You are Aroused?
DISCUSSION
ABSTRACT
Heather Bloch Regan A. R. Gurung University of
Wisconsin, Green Bay
Does feeling scared or aroused influence how
attractive other people appear? We manipulated
mood (happy, anxious, aroused, neutral) using
video clips and tested if this influenced
attractiveness ratings. Mood did not make a
difference in ratings. We discuss implications
of this finding for the study of social
perception, body image and disorderly eating.
There were no significant differences in
attractiveness ratings across conditions. Targets
were rated similarly on all the dependent
variables. One possible reason why there was no
difference in the ratings of the targets was that
the mood manipulation did not sustain long
enough. It was expected that the results would
follow the mood-congruence effect, and that those
subjects who were partaking in the excitement and
happy conditions would rate the target pictures
higher on attractiveness than the neutral
condition. It was also expected for the neutral
condition to rate the pictures higher than the
suspense condition. Although a variety of mood
manipulations have been successful and our
manipulation clearly worked based on the
differences in mood ratings, it is likely the
induced mood faded before influencing ratings.
Another possible explanation is that the subject
s may not have felt the situation was real
enough. By not relating the target or the
situation to themselves subjects may have made
more objective and external judgments. If the
subjects had been asked to make judgments about
the targets by comparing themselves to the target
there may have been a significant difference in
those judgments. In essence, it is likely that
the judgment was not realistic enough to the
participants although we designed it to be
similar to other studies conducted in the
literature. If the null findings do hold up in
replications of this study, it would suggest that
social judgments may not be as susceptible to
transitory moods states as is commonly believed.
Apart from findings such as those for depressive
realism, it is possible that participants are
capable of being objective, or at least do not
let their personal mood states interact with
their ratings.
METHOD
The experiment used a mixed factorial design,
with mood as the one between-subjects variable.
Attractiveness was the main dependent variable.
We instilled four moods happy, excited, neutral,
and suspenseful. Participants in this study wer
e 176 undergraduate students at the University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay who were primarily students
enrolled in an introduction to psychology course
during the fall semester 2004, and fulfilled a
course requirement. The mean age of subjects was
19.30 (SD 2.78) and an age range of 18-45 years
old. 57 of the participants were male while 119
were female. 107 were freshmen, 39 were
sophomores, 19 were juniors, 8 were seniors and 3
classified them selves as other.
Materials The experiment was conducted entirely
through the use of Media Lab (Jarvis, 2000) on
computers. Headphones were used so subjects
would only hear the video being played in the
condition they were participating in.
The following video clips were used to elicit
a certain mood in the subject. The videos and
the moods they were to elicit were as follows
Stealing Beauty (Thomas, 1996) which elicited
excitement, Dangerous Attraction (Buitenhuis,
1999) which generated suspense, Amazing Wonders
of the World-Kingdom of the West Yellowstone,
Yosemite Glacier National Park (Brooks
Walkenhorst, 1999) to bring for a neutral
baseline mood, and SNL-The Best of Adam Sandler
(Altman Weis, 1999) to create a happy mood.
Each video clip was approximately ten minutes
long. There was also a short three and a half
minute clip from SNL-The Best of Adam Sandler
(Altman Weis, 1999) viewed at the conclusion of
all sessions that assured that all subjects would
leave the research suite in a happy mood. The
subjects also viewed target pictures of women who
were either in a two-piece bikini or in casual
clothing (blue jeans and a t-shirt that were well
fitted) the faces on the women were blurred out.
All of the target pictures came from previous
studies in this lab. Procedure Subjects were
randomly assigned to one of the four mood
conditions, read and signed a consent form, and
then began the experiment. Subjects provided
demographic information, took the Self-Attributes
Questionnaire, and then watched one of the four
ten-minute video clips. Finally, the subjects
viewed the target pictures and rated the women on
perceived characteristics such as attractiveness,
loyalty, and fitness using a 9 point scale (1Not
at All to 9 Very much so).
INTRODUCTION
Everyone experiences some degree of emotion every
minute of their day. These feelings can be
projected on to others depending upon the
situation that people find themselves in. People
may appear more attractive when we are in a good
mood and more unattractive if we are sad. We are
constantly making social judgments and
understanding why we tend to rate people certain
ways or what influences those ratings is an
important enterprise. Moods clearly influence
judgments (Damasio, 2004 Forgas, 2003) but can
they influence how attractive we think others
are? The effect of sadness and happiness has
been tested in various domains, but not as much
research has examined emotions such as arousal
and anxiety. This experiment rectifies this
situation to further our understanding of how
emotions influence perceived attractiveness.
Many theories suggest why emotions influence jud
gment. For example, the mood-congruence effect
shows that when there is a match between
someones mood and their thoughts, people will
retrieve material from their memory that is
congruent or matches the current mood state they
are experiencing (Rusting, 1999 Mayer, Gaschke,
Braverman, Evans, 1992). It is also possible
for physiological arousal to create feelings of
attraction within people. Three theories of aro
usal explain the effects that arousal has on
attraction (Foster, Witcher, Campbell Green,
1998). Misattribution suggests that emotion is a
physiological arousal followed by a cognitive
label for that arousal. Negative reinforcement
theory is useful when subjects have experienced
arousal through fear in the past. When the
subject interacts with a target that reduces the
fear, the subject is negatively reinforced and
therefore subjects perceive the target as more
attractive (Foster et. al., 1998). The final
theory of arousal is response-facilitation which
suggests that arousal heightens a specific
dominant response for a given interpersonal
attraction context. Arousal can be caused by
pleasurable means (e.g., sexual arousal) or
negative means (e.g., fear). Would these two
states influence perceptions differently?
RESULTS
An ANOVA showed that the mood manipulation was
significant. Participants in different conditions
both rated the clips significantly differently
(e.g., in level of humor, arousal, or educational
value) and had different levels of moods in
response (happy, tense, aroused).
The main question that this study intended to an
swer was whether or not perception was altered
based on the mood that someone was experiencing.
A MANCOVA, multivariate analysis of covariance,
with condition as the between-subjects factor and
controlled for sex was used to analyze the data.
Even though there was a significant change in
mood there were not significant differences in
the ratings of the targets between conditions.
Presented at the 2005 American Psychological
Societys Annual Conference. Los Angeles, CA.
Email gurungr_at_uwgb.edu