Subjects in a positive or a neutral mood were engaged in an impression formation task (Experiment 1), and in a word fragment completion task (Experiment 2). A self-referent versus other-referent sentence completion task was used to induce a positive mood state. As a result, the subjects exhibited mood congruent effects on impression ratings in the self-referent but not in the other-referent mood induction condition. Word completion data, however, indicated that relevant traits (i.e., friendly traits) had been equally activated across the two mood induction conditions. It was also demonstrated that the self-referent induction procedure was effective in enhancing the level of self-esteem, whereas the other-referent one was not. The results converged to suggest that the enhancement in state self-esteem accompanying the self-referent procedure might be relevant to positive mood effects on person impression. This indicates the limitation of the mood priming model. (A)
Abstract