In this study the normative ratings of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS, Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention [CSEA], 1995) were compared with the ratings from a Bosnian sample. Seventy-two psychology undergraduates from the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) rated valence, dominance and arousal for a stratified sample of 60 pictures that was selected from the IAPS. Reliability coefficients indicate that the self-report ratings are internally consistent. The affective ratings from our sample correlated strongly with the North American ratings at: .95, .81 and .91, respectively for valence, arousal and dominance. Consistent with expectations, mean valence and dominance ratings did not differ significantly between the Bosnian and North American sample. Furthermore, plotting of the Bosnian valence and arousal ratings results in a similar boomerang shaped distribution as the North American affective ratings. Taken together, findings obtained from the Bosnian sample confirm the cross-cultural validity of the IAPS

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Methodological limitations call into question prior evidence that positive moods are associated with greater comparative optimism. Experiments 1-4 tested if mood affects comparative optimism using a mood manipulation that minimized experimenter demand. While the procedure was successful in inducing mood, we found no evidence for a mood effect on comparative optimism. The absence of a mood effect was not due to participants correcting their judgments in response to a presumed mood bias (Experiments 2, 3 and 4) or to participants proactively regulating their mood (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 5 compared the mood manipulation of Experiments 1-4 with an autobiographical recall procedure. Although the two methods were equally effective in inducing mood, only autobiographical recall influenced participants' comparative optimism. Study 6 provides preliminary evidence that experimenter demand may be responsible for the effects of autobiographical recall on comparative judgments.

The Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) presents an intriguing choice anomaly that offers insight into human reasoning. It presents a specific subclass of decision tasks that require the adequate use of Bayes theorem in order to make optimal decisions. In the MHD, participants are presented with three doors with only one door hiding the prize. After their initial choice of a door, they are offered additional information. A different door (one that does not hide the prize and one not chosen by the participant) is opened to reveal nothing behind it. Afterwards, the participants are offered to stay with their initial choice or to switch to the other remaining door. The better strategy is to always switch; a counterintuitive one for most people. We examine the notorious difficulty of the MHD from an affective perspective while relying on the dual processing approach to thinking. We varied participants? reliance on their affective reactions as opposed to a neutral condition and hypothesized that the affective reactions associated with the staying option contribute to worse performance on the task. Indeed, the participants in the affective condition chose the staying option more often than our control participants. Using the MHD as an appropriate paradigm of conditional probability reasoning we show that, for this type of task, an affective strategy is highly inefficient. We attribute these results to the affective reactions associated with the staying option, with regret avoidance associated with the switch option, and the conditional probability construction of the dilemma.

Studies have shown that affective states could be used as diagnostic information for the assessment of situational demands and that, as such, they can regulate resource mobilization. Accordingly, it was found that negative feelings cause overestimation of situational demands, which then leads to effort mobilization during performance on easy tasks but disengagement on difficult tasks. The present research investigated whether this emotion–motivation link could explain the usual differences in achievement on easy and difficult tasks under stereotype threat (ST). In Study 1, participants in ST, no‐ST, and no‐ST with fear induction conditions had to resolve a series of easy logical problems. As expected, ST and no‐ST‐fear groups reported higher effort investment and achieved better performance than the no‐ST group. In the following two studies, the no‐ST‐fear condition was replaced by an ST condition in which the informative potential of threat‐related feelings was prevented before the task performance. Although participants under ST reported similar elevation in anxiety, the expected increase in easy task performance (Study 2) and decrease in difficult task performance (Study 3) were observed only in the standard ST groups. Taken together, our findings suggest that threat‐related feelings could govern motivational processes and account for the effect of ST.

Past research suggests that students in social science often become more egalitarian while students in business and economics show a trend in the opposite direction. Using a cross-sectional study in which we compared first and third year students from different academic environments, we wanted to explore these issues and to test whether life goals may account for potential ideological differences among them. Psychology and economics students at first and third year of their respective academic group completed both the Aspiration index and social dominance orientation scale. Consistent with the socialization hypothesis, economics students reported higher levels of social dominance orientation than psychology students but only at the third year of study. A similar pattern of results was observed for extrinsic life goals (but no differences were found for intrinsic life goals). Importantly, the interaction between academic year and academic major on social dominance orientation was mediated by the measure of extrinsic life goals.

People's affective experiences can be influenced by multiple informational inputs. It remains unclear however how this occurs? In this paper, we investigate the construction of affective experiences dependent on the varying number of previously presented, affectively-charged, informational inputs. In addition, because affect is often used as a cue in judgment and decision-making, we probe whether the resulting affective experience is mapped onto people's valuation judgments (how much people are willing-to-pay for target rewards and experiences). In three studies, we show that people's overall affective experience is constructed by averaging the affect of the previously presented, affectively-charged inputs. Subsequently, we find that people rely on the resulting affective experience as a cue for their judgments, as willingnessto-pay valuations were predicted by the combined affective experience. We measured integral, expected, as well as momentary affectusing both self-report and physiological measures. We discuss the potential for studying further how multiple inputs change affect as well as the implications for judgment and decision making.

In the present study we test the hypothesis that the effect of mood congruence in autobiographical recall is underlain by mood. Thirty-eight female participants were subjected to positive, negative and neutral mood inductions, and then asked to recall three personal memories. Participants’ mood was assessed using self-report questionnaires and by electromyograph (EMG) measurements of corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscle activity. We replicated the congruence effect between the mood inductions and the valence of the participants’ recalled memories. Furthermore, this effect was mediated by mood, as measured by EMG and self-report questionnaires. The results suggest that mood influences the mood congruence effect in a way that cannot be explained by semantic priming alone