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 in several ways. Health specialists often have to make fast decisions under uncertainty—especially when the time frame is tight or previous knowledge is scarce. In these situations, contextual information is taken into account, including emotional states like mood. Findings show that there is an influence of specific moods enhancing or impairing cognitive processes involved in decision making. The following provides several examples of this.

Even highly experienced medical staff have to examine carefully the symptoms to give a [Page 781]diagnosis—during this examination process, moods might play an important role. A direct impact of mood in decision making can be derived from findings focusing on the abstraction level of information processing. There exists strong evidence that individuals in a happy mood perceive incoming information in a more generalized way (focusing on more general aspects or characteristics) than those experiencing a sad mood who are normally concentrating on more specific aspects. Imagining a routine checkup with a health professional, mood might be an influential factor regarding the diagnosis. For example, it could be responsible for an underestimation of the patient's symptoms. On the one hand, patients in a good mood may not report specifically enough about their physical or psychological state—which could lead to difficulties for the physician to find the right diagnosis. On the other hand, a physician in a bad mood may focus on the specificity of the visitor's health aspects too hard and therefore lack the ability to grasp the bigger picture.

Another risky aspect comes from the fact that happy moods, in contrast to sad moods, are found to be related to a more heuristic strategy of processing incoming information. Despite the elaborated previous knowledge of a physician, a patient might be better off when having an appointment with a sad doctor. Sad moods are not only found to support the systematic or analytic elaboration of the actualities but also to avoid the (sometimes) inappropriate use of stereotypical thinking. Stereotypes are derived from the application of broader categories based on a general knowledge basis—and are therefore a result of heuristic processing. Moreover, applied to the context of medical decision making, the influence of a happy mood could be problematic for the examination of stigmatized patients: They might be judged by stereotypical expectations rather than objective criteria. In contrast, a sad mood leads to a more systematic analysis as the provided information undergoes an individualized elaboration. In line with these findings, research shows that prior general knowledge is more influential when individuals are experiencing a happy rather than sad mood. Hence, due to their prior beliefs, happy professionals run the risk of deciding in favor of a confirmation bias (i.e., accepting only findings confirming their assumptions) and disregarding any deviant information.

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