Mood Effects

Among emotional influences in decision making, the concept of “mood” has always been of specific interest. Nevertheless, one of the most critical aspects in dealing with mood is its definition. Although contents are overlapping, mood only refers to the valence dimension of emotion and appears usually to be less intense. In contrast to affects, states of mood do not change rapidly and tend to last for longer periods of time—some authors even refer to depression as a state of negative mood. Taken together, studies examining this concept tend to lack a clear disambiguation to what states exactly they refer when talking about mood; a commonly accepted usage of the term is still to be achieved.

Applied to a medical environment, moods might play a distinctive role ...