Correcting for Mood-Induced Bias in the Evaluation of Political Candidates: The Roles of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Abstract

Participants were induced to feel either happy or sad while reading an article that described a politician’s stand on issues. When participants were unmotivated to evaluate the candidate at the time they read the article, they evaluated him more favorably when they were happy than when they were not. However, when participants were either intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to evaluate the candidate, they adjusted their evaluations to compensate for the biasing influence of the target-irrelevant affect they were experiencing. In fact, they overadjusted, reporting less favorable evaluations of him when they were happy than when they were not. These adjustments for bias occurred on-line, as the candidate’s issue stands were presented, rather than after all of the judgment-relevant information had been received.