Does Happiness Mean Friendliness?: Induced Mood and Heterosexual Self-Disclosure

The separate process model of mood and behavior suggested that positive mood is associated with a social, expansive, approach motivation, while negative mood is associated with an avoidant, egocentric motivation. The present experiment examined the differential impact of positive and negative mood stimuli that were self-relevant or non-self-relevant on males' social interaction and self-disclosure with a female. The self-relevant conditions were effective in altering both the subjects' self-esteem and mood states, while the non-self-relevant conditions were effective in altering only the subjects' moods. Supporting the separate process model prediction that positive mood increases sociability, the self-relevant and non-self-relevant positive mood inductions were equal in motivating more total communication and more moderately and highly intimate self-disclosures compared with the two negative mood conditions. The self-relevant and non-self-relevant negative mood conditions generally produced equivalent effects on communication behaviors, although the self-relevant negative mood subjects may have made a more rapid recovery from the negative experience than their counterparts.