On “good” days, he reasoned, everything just felt right without any past triumphs coming to mind. That account of how feelings influence thought seemed incomplete to the aspiring psychologist. When Schwarz was a graduate student in the late 1970s, an influential line of research held that happy moods make people more likely to remember positive events and sad moods more often revive memories of negative events. “It’s shallow and untrue to assume that positive feelings can only have positive consequences and negative feelings can only have negative consequences,” he says. Like Forgas, psychologist Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor sees mental value in sadness. In contrast to a mood, joy, anger and disgust feel intense and are experienced as having definite causes. But moods linger much longer than emotions, which typically flare up and burn out fairly quickly. Sad moods fall far short of clinical depression’s constant feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. A person may feel somewhat good or bad, happy or sad, without knowing why or even being aware of such moods. Whether good or bad, moods are relatively low-intensity, background feelings that can last for anywhere from a few minutes to the whole day. As a result, people in a cheery state have the luxury of focusing on themselves rather than on their environments. Happiness signals that a situation is safe, or at least not immediately threatening, Forgas suggests.
People in sad moods also show a greater willingness to work on demanding tasks, communicate more persuasively and are more concerned with being fair to others than are peers in neutral or happy moods.Īlternatively, good moods trigger a loose mode of thought conducive to creativity and seeing the big picture. And a little gloominess could help job applicants lousy moods cut down on the tendency to stereotype others, thus boosting the accuracy of first impressions. One investigation found that people in sad moods have an advantage remembering the details of unusual incidents that they have witnessed. There are likely benefits, and costs, to each thinking style.
POSITIVELY MOODY Different moods may trigger distinct thinking styles that allow people to respond appropriately to whatever situation they find themselves in, scientists speculate. Morose moods have evolved as early-warning signs of problematic or dangerous situations that demand close attention, these reports suggest. New and recent studies described by Forgas in the June Current Directions in Psychological Science illustrate some of the ways in which periods of sadness spontaneously recruit a detail-oriented, analytical thinking style. Each way of dealing with current circumstances generally works well, if imperfectly. Growing evidence suggests that gloomy moods improve key types of thinking and behavior, Forgas asserts in a new review paper aptly titled “Don’t worry, be sad!” For good evolutionary reasons, positive and negative moods subtly recruit thinking styles suited to either benign or troubling situations, he says. “Bad moods are seen in our happiness-focused culture as representing a problem, but we need to be aware that temporary, mild negative feelings have important benefits,”
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