Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Positive mood and executive function: evidence from stroop and fluency tasks.

Louise H Phillips1, Rebecca Bull, Ewan Adams

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom. louise.phillips@abdn.ac.uk

Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|August 6, 2003
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

How social media use and abuse are related to social cognition and loneliness in older adults.

European journal of ageing·2026
Same author

Spatial-numerical associations with nonsymbolic representations of quantity: Evidence from color decision.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same author

Expression ambiguity leads to greater influence of predictive context during face emotion perception.

Cognition & emotion·2026
Same author

Now you see it, now you don't: The age-related positivity effect to faces disappears in naturalistic settings.

Emotion (Washington, D.C.)·2025
Same author

Aging and complex emotion perception: the influence of context and multimodal presentation.

Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition·2025
Same author

From spatial construction to mathematics: Exploring the mediating role of visuospatial working memory.

Developmental psychology·2025

Positive mood can impair executive functions like task switching but improve creative fluency. The impact of happiness on cognitive tasks depends on task motivation and semantic processing.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Positive mood's impact on executive functions is debated, with some theories suggesting enhancement and others impairment.
  • Executive functions, including inhibition, switching, and strategy use, are primarily associated with the frontal lobe and anterior cingulate cortex.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the effects of positive mood on executive functions assessed via Stroop and fluency tests.
  • To determine if task characteristics, such as inherent motivation or semantic activation, moderate mood's influence on cognition.

Main Methods:

  • Participants completed Stroop and fluency tests under conditions designed to induce positive mood.
  • Performance metrics included accuracy and speed on inhibition, switching, and creative divergent thinking tasks.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Positive mood impaired performance on the switching condition of the Stroop test.
  • Positive mood enhanced performance on a creative uses test of fluency, indicating divergent thinking benefits.
  • Findings suggest mood effects on executive function are task-dependent.

Conclusions:

  • Positive mood can have differential effects on executive functions, impairing some (e.g., switching) while enhancing others (e.g., creativity).
  • The nature of the task, specifically its motivational properties and susceptibility to diffuse semantic activation, influences whether positive mood aids or hinders performance.