Effect of Mood Induction on Attitude Polarization

Abstract

Prior research has shown that when individuals with strong prior attitudes encounter ambiguous evidence, they use heuristical thinking on attitude congruent components of the evidence, while using elaborative thinking on attitude incongruent components. This leads them to biased assimilation, in which they judge attitude congruent portions as more convincing. As a result, attitude polarization, or shift of attitudes in the direction of initial attitudes, occurs. In this study, I examined the effect of mood induction on biased assimilation and attitude polarization. Data show that negative mood increases motivation to elaborate and thus, reduce biased assimilation. No evidence of attitude polarization was found.