Forgas, J - Feeling and Speaking, Mood Effects On Verbal Communication Strategies

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
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Feeling and Speaking: Mood Effects on Verbal Communication Strategies

Joseph P. Forgas
Pers Soc Psychol Bull 1999; 25; 850
DOI: 10.1177/0146167299025007007
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1999 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
PERSONALITY
AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOG Y BULLETIN
Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS
Feeling and Speaking: Mood Effects

on Verbal Communication Strategies
Joseph P. Forgas
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
(Fiedler, 1991; Forgas, 1994, 1995b; Sedikides, 1995;
Forgas, in press).
This article reports two experiments that seek to
extend current work on the effects of mood on social
cognition to the domain of interpersonal behavior by
exploring the role of affect in request production. Drawing on recent affect-cognition theories and past research
on requesting, these studies seek to show that negative
moods increase and positive moods decrease request
politeness. Furthermore, these mood effects should be
accentuated when the request alternatives considered
are more risky and unconventional and are more likely
to require extensive processing, as suggested by the AIM
(Forgas, 1995a).
What is the role of affect in language use, and the production of

requests ini particular? Two experiments predicted and found
that (a) sad moods increase and happy moods decrease request
politeness, and (b) these mood effects are greater when considering more risky and unconventional requests that require more
elaborate processing. In Experiment 1, sad persons preferred
more polite requests, and decisions about unconventional
requests were particularly sensitive to affective influences.
Experiment 2 used an unobtrusive method to elicit natural
requests in a conversation. Negative affect produced greater
politeness and longer delays in posing requests. Recall data and
mediational analyses confirmed that greater mood effects were
linked to the more extensive processing recruited by unconventional requests, consistent with the Affect Infusion Model
(AIM). The cognitive mechanisms that mediate mood effects on
language production are discussed, and the implications of the
findings for strategic communication and for theories of affect
and cognition are considered.
Requesting as an Interpersonal Strategy

Language is the dominant medium of interpersonal
behavior, and strategic messages such as requests play a
crucial role in everyday life. It is through the judicious
use of requests that we achieve our goals, satisfy our
needs, manage social situations, and coordinate social
behaviors. Requests play a particularly important role in
many strategic encounters such as bargaining and negotiation (Pruitt & Carnevale, 1993), obtaining help from
others (Dovidio, 1984; Piliavin, Dovidio, Gaertner &
Clark, 1981; Salovey, Mayer & Rosenhan, 1991), as well as
the management of personal relationships (Cunningham, 1988; Fletcher & Fitness, 1995; Holmes & Rempel,
1989; Noller & Ruzzene, 1991). Field studies indicate
erbal messages are a key component of strategic

interpersonal behavior. People use language to achieve
their interpersonal objectives, to engage in symbolic
exchanges with others, to establish a coherent sense of
the self, and to construct a shared understanding of the
world (Mead, 1934; Vygotsky, 1962). Surprisingly, we still
know very little about how a speakers temporary mood
may influence the production of strategic verbal messages, such as the formulation of requests. Request production often involves complex, elaborate cognitive
processing strategies, as speakers need to assess the relative costs and benefits associated with more or less direct
verbal forms (Clark, 1989; Forgas, 1985; Gibbs, 1985).
Recent research based on the Affect Infusion Model
(AIM) (Forgas, 1995a) suggests that mood is particularly
likely to influence the outcome of tasks that require such
more elaborate and substantive processing strategies
Authors Note: This project was supported by a Special Investigator Award

from the Australian Research Council and the Research Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. The contribution of
Stephanie Moylan is gratefully acknowledged. Requests for reprints
should be sent to Joseph P. Forgas, School of Psychology, University of
New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia; e-mail: jp.forgas@unsw.edu.au;
Internet http://www.psych.unsw.edu.au/~joef/jforgas/htm.
PSPB, Vol. 25 No. 7, July 1999 850-863
1999 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
850
that requests can be of four types, designed to obtain

information, goods, action, or permission (Blum-Kulka,
Danet, & Gershon, 1985). Despite the great variety of
requests in terms of content and form, most requests can
be characterized in terms of a single critical dimension:
their level of politeness or directness. Politeness is a pragmatic, normative concept (Brown & Levinson, 1987),
whereas directness indicates the degree of immediacy in
the semantic and syntactic formulation of the request.
Request politeness and directness are closely and
inversely related, and members of a culture share strong
consensual norms about the level of politeness implied
by more or less direct request forms, and they produce
their requests accordingly (Clark & Schunk, 1980;
Gibbs, 1983, 1985; Holtgraves, 1997). The everyday use
of requests is thus dominated by one overriding pragmatic constraint: they should be formulated so as to
allow participants to present and maintain an appropriate face or social persona (Giles & Powesland, 1975;
Goffman, 1974). To achieve this, requests need to be sufficiently polite so as not to give offense yet be sufficiently
direct to maximize compliance (Bavelas, 1985; Clark,
1989; Forgas, 1983, 1985).
Requesting is thus an inherently risky enterprise in
which the instrumental objectives (obtaining compliance) need to be carefully balanced against interpersonal considerations (avoiding causing upset).
Although many routine conversations can be processed
in a mindless fashion (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz,
1978), requests often require more elaborate and substantive processing (Clark, 1989; Gibbs, 1983). Indeed,
the pragmatic rules of request politeness are so elaborate that most children do not adequately master this
register until about age 9 (Axia & Baroni, 1985). Formulating requests thus presents individuals with a particularly demanding and complex cognitive task.
Requesters need to carefully estimate the risks and
likely costs and benefits associated with using more or
less polite forms. Decisions about using more risky and
unconventional request forms may well require more
extensive processinga possibility that will be evaluated
here. The optimum level of politeness for a given request
is also influenced by a complex set of pragmatic variables, including age, status, gender, culture and personality, the nature of the relationship, and the perceived
risk of compliance or rejection (Forgas, 1985; Gibbs,
1983, 1985; Holtgraves & Yang, 1990; Jordan & Roloff,
1990). These two experiments will evaluate the possibility that feeling good and feeling bad may significantly
color the way people perceive and interpret request
situations and the inherent risks of different request
alternatives, ultimately influencing their sense of confidence and thus the kind of requests they prefer.
851
This affect-infusion effect should be greater in circumstances that require more elaborate, substantive
processing strategies. Several studies suggest that
unusual or unexpected information often recruits more
elaborate processing and produces greater affectinfusion effects (Forgas, 1994, 1995b). As polite conventional requests are the norm in most social situations
(Clark, 1989; Forgas, 1985; Gibbs, 1983; Langer et al.,
1978), it was expected here that decisions involving
more risky, unusual, and impolite requests would
require more elaborate, constructive processing and be
more influenced by affect-infusion effects. Such risky
and more unusual messages should also be better
remembered later on, providing indirect evidence for
the more extensive processing they received (Gibbs,
1983, 1985). Of course, in some circumstances, it may be
polite indirect requests that require more elaborate
processing and are more subject to affect-infusion
effectsfor example, when requesters seek to control,
manipulate, or influence a high-power, high-status person (Forgas, 1985).
Mood Effects on Request Strategies
What are the mechanisms that allow affect to infuse
our thinking and behaviors, such as request formulation? Although this question has been a source of fascination to philosophers, writers, and artists since time
immemorial, psychological research on this phenomenon is surprisingly recent. Early explanations emphasized either psychoanalytic (Feshbach & Singer, 1957) or
associationist principles (Berkowitz, 1993). In contrast,
contemporary theories focus on the cognitive mechanisms that link feelings and thinking (Blascovich &
Tomaka, 1996; Branscombe & Cohen, 1991; Fiedler,
1988, 1990; Forgas, 1992a; Mayer, 1986; Mayer, McCormick & Strong, 1995; Stroessner & Mackie, 1992). It
appears that affect can have two distinct kinds of effects
on cognition, (a) informational effects, influencing
what people think (the content of cognition), and (b)
processing effects, influencing how people think (the
process of cognition). Informational mood effects are
typically indirect, operating through memory mechanisms involving the selective priming and greater use of
mood-related information (Bower, 1991; Forgas &
Bower, 1987; Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984). The
greater availability of affectively primed information
may in turn influence the way people interpret complex
and ambiguous requesting situations and may ultimately
influence the kind of requests they produce.
In some evaluative judgments, mood may also play a
heuristic function, when people mistakenly use their
unattributed mood as information, relying on a How do
I feel about it? heuristic (Clore, Schwarz, & Conway,
1994). However, request production typically involves

852
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
more than just heuristic processing, as it requires the

substantive, elaborate processing of subtle situational
cues (Clark, 1989; Gibbs, 1983, 1985). Affective influences on requesting are thus more likely to be produced
by affect-priming mechanisms during substantive processing, rather than the direct, heuristic use of affect as
information (Bower, 1991; Forgas, 1995a; Sedikides,
1995). The various informational and processing consequences of mood were recently integrated in a comprehensive multi-process Affect Infusion Model (AIM; Forgas, 1992a; 1995a), in line with previous other
process-based theories (Fiedler, 1991).
In terms of this model, the extent of affect infusion
into cognition and behavior should vary along a processing continuum. The model identifies four alternative
processing strategies in terms of (a) the kind of information search strategies people use (open search vs. targeted search) and (b) the exhaustiveness of the information considered in constructing a response (full search
vs. partial search). Two of the processing strategiesdirect access of a previously stored response and
motivated processing in service of particular objective
such as mood repairinvolve highly directed, targeted
information search strategies that are impervious to
affect-infusion effects. Thus, highly conventional, lowrisk, and routine requests that can be produced relatively
mindlessly using a simple, direct access strategy should
not be strongly influenced by mood. In contrast, when
tasks require some degree of constructive thinking, people need to adopt either simplified heuristic processing,
or systematic substantive processing. These processes do
allow affect infusion to occur, as affect can either directly
(in the course of heuristic processing) or indirectly
(through affect priming) inform the construction of a
response.
To the extent that strategic communication such as
request production involves some degree of substantive
processing, affect priming is the most likely mechanism
responsible for mood effects. Furthermore, these mood
effects should be greater as more constructive and elaborate processing is required, as is the case when people
consider more risky and unconventional requests. The
AIM can account for much of the available empirical evidence for mood effects (or their absence) in cognition
and judgments to date (Forgas, 1995a). To be specific,
several studies support the counterintuitive prediction
of this model that tasks requiring more elaborate, substantive processing are also more likely to be infused by
affect (Fiedler, 1991; Forgas, 1992b, 1994, 1995b;
Sedikides, 1995).
Aims and Predictions
Producing a strategic request requires communicators to engage in constructive, open information search,
relying on their stored memories and inferences to

assess the situation and to calculate the likely impact of
their words. Prior research suggests that happy persons
tend to recall more positive information; are more confident, ambitious, and helpful; set themselves higher
goals; overestimate the likelihood of success; and are
more likely to take moderate risks (Branscombe, 1988;
Clark & Waddell, 1983; Cunningham, 1988; Forgas,
1995a; Mayer, McCormick, & Strong, 1995; Milberg &
Clark, 1988; Sinclair & Mark, 1992). In contrast, sad
moods tend to produce more negative assessments of
the self, reduce self-confidence and self-efficacy, and
lead to more self-deprecating attributions and more cautious and risk-avoidant judgments and behaviors (Cervone, Kopp, Schaumann & Scott, 1994; Forgas, et al.,
1984; Kaplan, 1991; Mayer & Hanson, 1995; Sedikides,
1992, 1994, 1995).
As a result of affect-priming mechanisms, happy and
sad moods should have a mood-congruent influence on
the way speakers select request alternatives. People in a
happy mood should form more positive and more confident inferences due to the selective priming and greater
accessibility of positive memories and experiences about
similar situations in the past and use more confident,
direct, and risky request forms. In contrast, sad people
might selectively recall incidents when they suffered a
loss of face due to overly direct requests and should
employ a more cautious, indirect, and polite requesting
strategy. Furthermore, these mood effects on requesting
were expected to be greater in circumstances that call for
more elaborate, substantive processing. Such more
extensive processing may be required when people consider a more risky, unconventional request form rather
than a conventional, routine request form (Clark, 1989;
Langer et al., 1978). One indication of more extensive
and detailed processing is better recall memory for the
requests used later. The accuracy of recall for more or
less risky, unconventional requests produced by happy
and sad participants will also be evaluated here as an
indication of the kind of processing strategy used by
requesters.
EXPERIMENT 1
The first experiment was designed as an initial exploration of mood effects on requesting strategies. We
expected people to adopt a more confident, risky, and
direct requesting strategy when experiencing a positive
mood, consistent with the greater availability of positively valenced thoughts and associations. In contrast,
people experiencing a temporary bad mood should prefer more cautious, polite forms due to their more pessimistic assessment of the felicity conditions for their
requests. Furthermore, these mood effects were
expected to be greater when more risky, unconventional

requests requiring more substantive and elaborate processing strategies are considered, as predicted by the AIM
(Forgas, 1995a). These hypotheses were evaluated using
a broad range of situations in which requesting occurs,
representing a variety of possible request types (BlumKulka et al., 1985; Forgas, 1985; Jordan & Roloff, 1990)
to increase the ecological validity of the design.
Method
Overview and participants. Participants were randomly
assigned to view positive, negative, or neutral videotapes
(the mood induction) in an allegedly unrelated experiment. Following mood induction, participants read 16
short scenarios representing four examples each of
requests for action, goods, information, or permission.
They then rated their likely use of each of nine request
alternatives representing various levels of politeness in
each situation. There were 103 participants (53 females,
50 males) who did the study as part of their course
requirements; there were 36 persons (18 females, 18
males) in the happy condition, 22 in the control condition (12 females, 10 males), and 45 in the sad mood condition (23 females, 22 males).
Mood manipulation. Videotapes were used to induce
happy, neutral, or sad moods (Forgas, 1994). This mood
manipulation was described as a separate study designed
to validate films for later use in another experiment.
This method has been extensively tried and tested both
in laboratory and field research, and it has produced salient and enduring moods in the past (Forgas, 1994,
1995b). The 10-minute films used included scenes from
(a) a popular comedy series (positive mood), (b) a program on architecture (control), and (c) a film dealing
with death from cancer (negative mood). At the conclusion of the films, a short film assessment questionnaire
was distributed, asking participants to rate their current
mood on 7-point happy-sad and good-bad scales embedded among several distractor questions.
Request scenarios. Sixteen short request scenarios were
constructed; four requests each were for action, goods,
information, or permission based on naturalistic taxonomies of requesting (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1985; Forgas, 1985). Some examples of request scenarios are the
following:
Request for action. You and some friends are renting an
apartment. The knobs on the kitchen cupboards need
replacing. You have rung the landlord to ask him to buy
some new knobs, so you say to him . . .
Request for information. You have gone to see your lecturer to find out your grade for the mid-session exam.
You say to him . . .
Request for goods. You have been asked to speak to a
school class about university study. Before you start, you
853
realize that there is no chalk. Since you want to write on

the board you say to one of the children . . .
Request for permission. You are going to a party. Since
you dont expect to be home until late, you want to borrow your fathers car. So, you say to him . . .
Request alternatives. For each of the 16 request situations, participants were given nine more or less conventional and risky request alternatives to consider. These
alternatives were based on previous research on requesting and were designed to include a wide variety of standard linguistic request phrases. These ranged from
rather risky, confrontational direct commands (Close
the window, I want you to close the window), through
intermediate forms such as suggestions and questions
(You should close the window, Will you close the window?), to indirect, conventional and polite linguistic
formulations using hints and veiled questions (It seems
a bit cold in here, Is the window open?). The objective
in using nine alternative forms was to provide participants with a broad and representative range of more or
less conventional linguistic request possibilities.
As the perceived risk of these requests may be psychologically important in eliciting more or less elaborate
processing strategies, each of the nine different request
forms was separately rated on a 9-point risky/not risky
scale by an independent group of respondents (N = 40).
This information was subsequently used to evaluate the
hypothesis that more risky, unusual requests tend to
recruit more elaborate, constructive processing, increasing the potential for affect-infusion effects.
Procedure. Participants were tested in groups of 10 to
15 people and were randomly assigned to the mood conditions. At the beginning of the session, they were told
that two separate experiments will be carried out, one
dealing with the validation of films for a future study (in
fact, the mood-induction procedure) and another unrelated study about language use. Participants were then
shown the mood-induction videotapes and were asked to
complete a brief mood validation questionnaire, rating
their mood on 7-point happy-sad and good-bad scales.
Following the mood induction, the second study was
introduced as dealing with
the language people use in everyday situations. You will
find a number of common, everyday social situations
described below. For each situation . . . rate each of the
alternative requests shown in terms of how likely you
would be to use that form of request . . . on a 7-point
scale,
from 1 = extremely unlikely to use to 7 = extremely likely to

use. A careful debriefing completed the procedure. No
evidence of awareness of the manipulations or hypothe-

854
ses was detected. The aims and objectives of the research

were explained, and care was taken to eliminate any
residual mood effects.
Results and Discussion
Mood validation. The analysis of self-rated mood on
the combined happy-sad and good-bad scales (Cronbachs alpha = .78) revealed that those who saw a happy
film felt significantly better than did the control group,
t(56) = 7.96; p < .01 (M = 1.64 vs. 3.45). In contrast, those
who saw a sad film reported that their mood was significantly worse than in the control group, t(65) = 7.06; p <
.01 (M = 3.45 vs. 5.20). Differences in mood between the
happy and the sad groups were also highly significant,
t(79) = 18.35; p < .01 (M = 1.64 vs. 5.20). These results
confirm that the mood induction procedure was indeed
highly effective in generating markedly different good
and bad moods in the participants, as also found in prior
experiments using this procedure (Forgas, 1994).
Factor analysis of request types. The nine request types
may not necessarily represent wholly independent
response alternatives in terms of their directness and
politeness. To control for this possibility, an overall principal components analysis of responses to the nine
request forms was carried out. This analysis sought to (a)
identify distinct, nonoverlapping request types, (b) create a smaller set of nonredundant response alternatives,
and (c) control for the possibility of Type 1 error in subsequent analyses. The oblique rotation of factors with
Eigenvalues > 1.0 produced three factors accounting for
64.4% of the variance, with a correlation of less than .10
between any two factors. The first factor, accounting for
28.6% of the variance, was marked by the four most
polite, conventional, and indirect requests (e.g., Would
you mind getting some chalk? I would like to write something on the board. Will you get some chalk? Could you
get some chalk?), and was labeled polite requests. The second factor, accounting for 19.6% of the variance, was
marked by the three intermediate request forms employing statements (e.g., There is no chalk. I would like some
chalk. You should get some chalk.). The third factor,
accounting for 16.2% of the variance, was marked by the
two most direct and impolite request forms (e.g., Get
some chalk. I want you to get some chalk). Based on this
analysis, ratings of the nine request types were combined
into three combined measures, indicating a persons
preference for polite, intermediate, and impolite
request types respectively (Cronbachs alpha > .77).
Mood effects on requests choices. Next, an overall analysis
of variance was carried out on these combined preference ratings. The analysis evaluated the effects of mood
(happy, sad, neutral), request politeness (polite, intermediate, impolite), and request objective (requesting
action, goods, information, or permission) on preference ratings. Results showed that mood had no significant main effect on preferences. However, there was a
significant main effect due to request type, F(2, 100) =
6.33; p < .05. Not surprisingly, low-risk, polite, and intermediate requests were significantly preferred to impolite requests overall, consistent with prior evidence that
such requests represent the most common and least risky
default option in most situations (Clark, 1989; Forgas,
1985) (see Figure 1). The situational context also made a
predictable difference, as indicated by an interaction
between request politeness and request objective, F(6,
91) = 5.89; p < .01. Thus, more polite requests were preferred when asking for information or permission rather
than asking for goods or action. These differences are
similar to previous work (Forgas, 1985) and are only of
tangential interest here, other than to confirm that the
manipulations were effective in producing different
request preferences.
Of greatest theoretical interest here is the significant
interaction found between mood and request politeness, F(4, 97) = 9.32; p < .01. This interaction shows that
mood had no significant influence on preferences for
polite and intermediate requests, which may be seen as
less risky, generally conforming to conventional expectations, and can be processed in a direct and relatively
mindless fashion (Forgas, 1985; Gibbs, 1985; Langer
et al., 1978). This result suggests that these most conventional and polite ways of requesting were presumably
processed by people using relatively robust, routine, and
simple information processing, such as a direct access
strategy, that was found to be impervious to mood effects
in past research (Fiedler, 1991; Forgas, 1995a; Sedikides,
1995). To the extent that people comprehend many
conventional, metaphoric utterances via established
conventions of language use (Gibbs, 1983, p. 524), they
need not substantively process the specific meaning of
the verbal utterance, providing little opportunity for
affect infusion to occur. In terms of the AIM, one would
not expect mood effects when such a simple, routine
processing strategy is used. One likely reason for the less
elaborate processing of conventional requests is that
these utterances are seen as inherently less risky. An
analysis of variance of the perceived risk of these three
groups of requests supported this interpretation. These
requests were indeed significantly different in terms of
their perceived level of risk, as established by the independent ratings, F(2, 37) = 19.83; p < .01 (M = 2.43, 4.37,
7.11), with impolite, direct requests rated as most risky
and polite requests rated as least risky.
As predicted, mood did have a significant influence
on preferences for more risky, direct, and impolite
request forms, F(2, 100) = 13.99; p < .01. Direct request
forms were significantly less preferred by participants in

Figure 1
The differential influence of positive, control, and negative

mood on preferences for polite, intermediate, and impolite
requests.
a sad mood than by participants experiencing a positive,

F(1, 79) = 10.35, p < .01, or a neutral, F(1, 65) = 4.11, p <
.01, mood state (see Figure 1). In terms of a strategic
model of interpersonal communication, this result suggests that dysphoric participants are least likely to
engage in what may be termed high risk, direct verbal
strategies when making requests. This pattern is somewhat similar to the risk-avoiding behavior associated with
sad mood both in normal and in depressed participants
(Forgas, in press; Ottaviani & Beck, 1988).
These results support the main hypothesis that mood
should have a greater influence on decisions about the
use of more risky request types that are more likely to violate cultural norms of politeness and thus require more
extensive and elaborate processing (Clark, 1989; Gibbs,
1983). The fact that the more impolite, direct requests
were also seen as more risky specifically supports this
interpretation. In a somewhat similar vein, previous
studies investigating social judgments also report that
affect infusion is greatest when the targets are complex,
unusual, or ambiguous and thus require longer and
more substantive processing strategies for a response to
be computed (Fiedler, 1991; Forgas, 1992b, 1994, 1995b;
Sedikides, 1995). We found somewhat similar mood
effects on other strategic messages, such as selfdisclosure in a recently completed series of experiments
(Forgas & Ciarrochi, 1999), suggesting that perceived
risk may indeed be a key variable mediating mood effects
on strategic communication.
855
However, given what we know about the complex

situational influences on language production (Bavelas,
1985; Gibbs, 1985), it is possible that in different circumstances, it may be the more polite request forms that
require more elaborate processing and thus are more
open to affect infusion. For example, it is possible that
when seeking to control or manipulate high-status, powerful others, it is indirect, veiled requests that may
require more elaborate processing and be more subject
to affect infusion.
It is noteworthy that mood effects were quite similar
across the various request scenarios studied here, with
no interaction between mood and request goals. This is
as expected because situational difficulty was not
manipulated here, and there is no reason to assume that
different request objectives (asking for goods, information, etc.) should have intrinsically different processing
requirements. Indeed, the lack of interaction between
mood and request goals suggests that the effects
obtained here are quite robust and may apply across a
variety of requesting contexts. Although the results of
Experiment 1 are clearly encouraging, these data were
obtained in hypothetical situations using prestructured
request alternatives. The second experiment was
designed to elaborate on these findings in a more realistic context and to provide more direct evidence about
processing differences in the form of recall data.
EXPERIMENT 2
Although Experiment 1 presents consistent and compelling data for mood effects on requesting, these effects
have been obtained in the rather artificial context of a
laboratory study, using hypothetical situations in which
participants were naturally aware that their communication strategies were under scrutiny. It may be argued that
interpersonal communication and strategic verbal messages are particularly subject to conscious monitoring
and confounding demand effects. The replication of
these findings in naturalistic situations in which participants are not aware that their verbal responses are
recorded and analyzed is thus of particular importance.
This was one of the objectives of the second experiment.
Experiment 1 suggested that mood effects were most
marked when participants considered unconventional,
problematic requests that were judged as more risky and
were most likely to recruit elaborate, substantive processing strategies. Experiment 2 was designed to link these
greater mood effects to more extensive processing
strategies, as indicated by recall memory data. If mood
effects are indeed greater when a risky request receives
more substantive, elaborate processing, we may expect
that people should also better remember more elabo-

856
rately processed requests later. Accordingly, in Experiment 2, participants recall of their requests formulated
in happy, control, or sad moods will also be assessed.
Method
Overview. An unobtrusive procedure was used to elicit
and analyze naturally produced requests as a function of
mood. Again, participants signed up for what they
believed to be two separate experiments, concerned
with the evaluation of audio-visual stimuli (in fact, the
mood-induction stage using films) and a subsequent
study of social judgments. As in Experiment 1, participants were randomly assigned to the mood conditions,
and they viewed a film intended to produce happy, intermediate, or sad moods. Afterward, they were asked by
the experimenter to request a particular file from a
neighboring office and then deliver it to the experimenter. Their spoken request for the file was surreptitiously recorded and analyzed. After the request episode, participants completed the mood validation
questionnaire as described in Experiment 1 and performed an unrelated interference task that took about
15 to 20 minutes. Finally, their recall memory for the
exact words used in their requests was assessed. Participants were 78 students (39 females and 39 males) composing 26 persons (13 females and 13 males) in each of
the three mood conditions.
Immediately after the requesting episode, participants completed a mood validation questionnaire, rating their mood on 7-point happy-sad and good-bad
scales embedded among several distractor items. For the
rest of the session, they participated in an unrelated
social judgmental task that took about 15 to 20 minutes
to complete. At the end, they were given a surprise recall
task and were asked to write down word for word, or as
accurately as you can remember, the words you used to
request the file in the neighboring room. These recall
protocols were subsequently rated for overall accuracy of
recall on a 10-point scale by two independent raters who
were blind to the mood condition, and achieved an
interrater reliability of .83. A careful debriefing completed the procedure. We found no evidence of any
awareness of the manipulations, and all participants
believed that the instruction to get the file was a genuinely impromptu request that was not part of the scheduled experimental procedure. To this extent, it appears
that we were indeed successful in obtaining and recording natural requests, despite the fact that the study was
carried out in a laboratory setting.
Results and Discussion
It seems like I do not have the stimulus file with me; while
I set up the next task, could you go to the next office, and
ask the person there to give you the stimulus file from the
filing cabinet, and bring it to me? She will know what you
need.
Mood validation. An analysis of self-rated mood on the

combined happy-sad and good-bad scales (Cronbachs
alpha = .86) showed that people who saw a happy film
were in a significantly better mood than the control
group, t(50) = 9.22; p < .01, and those exposed to the sad
film were in a significantly worse mood, t(50) = 5.93; p <
.01 (M = 2.01, 3.76, 4.96). Differences between the happy
and the sad groups were also highly significant, t(50) =
24.57; p < .01 (M = 2.01, 4.96). These results again confirm that exposure to films is a highly effective moodinduction procedure and that these mood effects
endured until after the unobtrusive requesting task was
completed.
All participants agreed to this request and proceeded to

leave the room to go to the next office to request the file.
The room they entered contained a concealed tape recorder, and their actual requests were carefully recorded. These requests were subsequently transcribed
and were rated and analyzed in terms of several characteristics such as their level of politeness, directness,
friendliness, elaboration, hedging, and complexity. Subsequently, the perceived risk of each of these requests
was also rated. Some participants formulated their request immediately after entering the room; others delayed making the request by making other remarks first
(such as introducing themselves or confirming that they
were in the right place). The effects of mood on the delay in making the request were also recorded and later
analyzed.
Mood effects on requests. Participants responses were

analyzed in terms of the following six dependent variables: the degree of directness, politeness, friendliness,
elaboration, hedging, and complexity of each request
produced. Two raters, blind to the mood conditions,
were trained in rating each of these features. They read
each of the response protocols independently and rated
each request on each of six 7-point bipolar scales
(polite/impolite, direct/indirect, friendly/unfriendly,
elaborate/simple, hedging/not hedging, simple/complex).
Their judgments showed considerable interrater reliability (.77). The ratings by the two raters were then averaged and used as dependent variables in subsequent
analyses. Next, a principal components analysis of
request ratings was undertaken to create a smaller
number of dependent variables by combining highly
correlated scales, thus reducing the probability of Type 1
Materials and procedure. The same mood induction

procedure was used as in Experiment 1. As soon as the
mood induction film finished, the experimenter turned
to the person with the following instruction:

error in subsequent analyses. The factor analysis using

oblique rotation identified three factors with Eigenvalues > 1.0, accounting for 31.6%, 23.9%, and 12.3% of the
variance, respectively. The first factor composed the following three scales: polite/impolite, direct/indirect,
and friendly/unfriendly, and was labeled politeness. Two
scales, elaborate/not elaborate and simple/complex,
loaded on the second factor were labeled elaboration. The
third factor was linked to ratings on the remaining scale,
hedging, and was labeled accordingly. Three new dependent variables were created from the six scale ratings of
each request by combining the appropriate scales using
factor scores as weights (Cronbachs alphas > .80). As a
preliminary analysis indicated no main or interaction
effects associated with gender, data for males and
females were combined in all analyses. In addition, the
perceived risk of each request produced was also independently rated on 7-point risky/not risky scales by two
raters (r = .82), and these ratings were subsequently combined to create a single risk measure.
Results confirmed that mood again had a significant
main effect on the politeness of these unobtrusively elicited conversational requests, F(2, 75) = 9.22; p < .01. Sad
people avoided using direct, impolite requests compared to controls, F(1, 50) = 5.07; p < .05, or participants
who were feeling happy, F(1, 50) = 6.41; p < .05. Furthermore, happy persons used less polite and more direct
request forms than did controls, F(1, 50) = 4.55; p < .05,
(see Figure 2). These results support the findings in
Experiment 1 and confirm that both positive and negative moods had a significant and symmetrical influence
on peoples use of strategic requests, with sad people
relying less and happy people relying more on direct,
impolite requests than do controls (Forgas, in press).
A one-way analysis of variance of the second dependent measure, the level of linguistic elaboration, and the
complexity of these free-response requests also revealed
a significant mood effect, F(2, 75) = 7.14; p < .01. Sad participants produced requests that were more complex
and elaborate than did controls, F(1, 50) = 4.32; p < .01,
who in turn produced more elaborate requests than did
happy people, although this last difference did not reach
significance (see Figure 2). Finally, an analysis of variance of mood effects on hedging also found a significant
mood effect, F(2, 75) = 4.58; p < .05, revealing a tendency
for happy persons to use less hedging in their request
strategies than did controls, F(1, 50) = 4.09; p < .05. Differences between the sad and the control groups were in
the predicted direction but did not reach significance.
These findings further confirm the results of the first
experiment and show that mood had a marked influence on request politeness, request elaboration, and on
perceived hedging in these naturalistic encounters.
Figure 2
857
The effects of positive, control and negative mood on the

level of politeness, degree of elaboration, and degree of
hedging of naturally produced requests.
Request latency. Not all participants made their

requests as soon as they entered the room. In the next
analysis, the effects of mood on a persons tendency to
delay the request was evaluated. For the purposes of this
analysis, request latency was quantified on a 4-point
scale, where the number assigned to each request indicates the serial position of that request in the persons
sequence of utterances. To remove outliers, the scale was
limited to 4 points. Thus, a request made immediately
when entering the room was scored as 1, and a request
made as the fourth, or as a later utterance of a person,
was scored as 4. A one-way analysis of variance on this
measure revealed a significant mood effect, F(2, 75) =
4.87; p < .05, indicating that sad persons delayed making
their requests longer than did control or happy persons
(M = 1.13, 1.54, 2.06). Differences between either of the
two experimental groups and the control group,
although in the predicted direction, failed to reach
significance.
Mood effects on memory for requests. Recall performance
provides a widely used albeit indirect measure of how
elaborately a request was processed. The effects of mood
(happy, control, sad) and request politeness (polite,
intermediate, impolite) on recall were evaluated using a
two-way analysis of variance. For the purposes of this

858
analysis, requests were identified as polite, intermediate,

or impolite in terms of their position in the top, middle,
or bottom third of all requests produced as rated by the
two independent raters within each of the mood groups.
Results revealed a significant main effect for mood, F(2,
69) = 6.47; p < .01. People in a sad mood remembered
their requests significantly better than did happy persons, F(1, 50) = 5.01; p < .05, whereas the differences
between the control group and the two experimental
groups did not reach significance (see Figure 3). These
memory effects suggest that dysphoria is more likely to
recruit a more systematic and analytic processing of
situational information, with beneficial effects on subsequent recall (Clark & Isen, 1982; Forgas, 1995a).
Request type also had a significant influence on
recall, F(2, 75) = 14.21; p < .01. Direct, impolite requests
were recalled more accurately overall than were either
intermediate, F(1, 49) = 5.56; p < .01, or indirect, polite
requests, F(1, 51) = 6.08; p < .05 (see Figure 3). This recall
bias is consistent with the prediction that unconventional, direct requests should receive more elaborate,
in-depth processing leading to superior recall, whereas
more routine, conventional requests are processed more
superficially (Gibbs, 1983; Kitayama & Burnstein, 1988).
Of greatest interest here is the significant interaction
between mood and request politeness on recall accuracy,
F(2, 69) = 5.33; p < .01. This interaction shows that indirect and intermediate requests were recalled about
equally well by participants in the different mood conditions. However, direct, unconventional requests were
remembered significantly better by sad participants
rather than control, F(1, 16) = 4.66; p < .05, or happy participants F(1, 16) = 4.87; p < .05 (see Figure 3).
An analysis of the perceived risk of more or less polite
requests showed that direct, impolite requests were also
seen as significantly more risky, and polite, indirect
requests were seen as less risky than were intermediate
requests, F(2, 75) = 10.24; p < .01 (M = 2.13, 3.73, 5.68).
The finding that risky, unconventional requests are better remembered is consistent with the prediction
derived from the AIM that mood effects tend to be
greater when more elaborate, substantive processing is
required to deal with more demanding and problematic
cognitive task, such as a risky rather than a cautious
request. Of course, some care should be taken in interpreting these results, as recall performance is an indirect
rather than direct measure of processing style, and may
be influenced by a variety of additional variables such as
cognitive capacity, motivation, and the like (Bower &
Forgas, in press).
Mediational analysis. Finally, a mediational analysis was
carried out using multiple regression procedures to test
the prediction that it was indeed the more or less
Figure 3
The effects of positive, control, and negative mood on

memory for polite, intermediate, and impolite requests.
substantive processing of different requests (as indicated by the recall memory data) that mediated subsequent mood effects on request characteristics. In these
analyses, the independent variable was induced mood
(as rated on the mood validation scales); the mediating
variable was the degree of substantive processing each
request received (as indicated by the recall score), and
the dependent variables were the degree of politeness,
elaboration, and hedging of each request as rated by the
two independent raters. To test the predicted pattern of
mediation, three regression analyses were performed
(Baron & Kenny, 1986). First, the independent variable,
mood, was used to predict the mediator, processing style
(recall). Second, the independent variable, mood, was
used to predict the dependent variablesrequest politeness, elaboration, and hedging. Third, the independent
variable (mood) and the mediator (processing style as
indexed by recall) were simultaneously entered into a
regression analysis to predict the dependent variables.
On the basis of these analyses, standardized regression
coefficients were generated and tested for significance.
To establish mediation, all three regression analyses
should yield significant results (p < .05), as was indeed
the case here. Mood significantly predicted recall rates
( = .28). Furthermore, mood also significantly predicted request politeness, elaboration, and hedging ( =
.42, .33, .25).

It is also critical to examine not only the significance

of the coefficients, but also their size (Baron & Kenny,
1986, p. 1177). If mediation occurs, the effects of the
independent variable on the dependent variables must
be less in the third equation (when the mediator is also
present) than in the second equation (when the mediator is absent). Such a pattern was obtained here. According to the third regression analysis, when the mediator
variable (processing strategy) was included in the analysis, the effects of mood were significantly reduced on
request politeness ( = .42 vs. .22, t(76) = 5.02; p < .01),
request elaboration ( = .33 vs. .19, t(76) = 3.43; p < .01),
and hedging ( = .25 vs. .12, t(76) = 2.86; p < .01). These
results confirm that processing strategy functioned as a
significant mediator of mood effects on the kind of
requests produced; the presence of the mediator (processing strategy) significantly reduced the relation
between the independent and the dependent variables.
Mediation was however only partial, as is commonly
found in studies of complex phenomena with multiple
causes. The effects of the independent variable (mood)
on the dependent variables (request quality) remained
significant even when the mediating variable was
included in the analyses for both the request politeness
and the elaboration variables (both s, p < .05). Such a
pattern suggests that the mediator is indeed potent,
albeit not both a necessary and a sufficient condition for
an effect to occur (Baron & Kenny, 1986, p. 1176). This
pattern is consistent with the implications of the AIM as
well as other studies of affect and cognition that typically
indicate only partial and not complete process mediation of mood effects on social cognition and behavior
(Forgas, 1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1998a, 1998b). Thus, the
mediational analysis suggests that the degree of substantive processing received by more or less risky requests (as
measured by recall accuracy) was a significant but only
partial rather complete mediator of affect-infusion
effects.
These findings, obtained in a realistic conversational
context in which participants were not aware of their
communications being recorded, provide an ecologically valid confirmation that short-term mood states do
have a highly significant impact on the way people construct and use strategic verbal messages. The mood
effects obtained in this experiment add to the results in
Experiment 1 by establishing a more direct link between
the strength of the mood effect and the degree of processing associated with particular requests, as indicated by
subsequent recall performance and the mediational
analyses. Taken together, these two studies were successful in extending previous research demonstrating mood
effects on attention, learning, memory, and judgments
(Bower, 1991; Clore et al., 1994; Forgas, 1995a) to a new
domainthe production of strategic requests.
859
In this study, people faced the task of making a

request to an unknown person in an unfamiliar situation. This task requires a communicator to engage in a
degree of elaborate, substantive processing to infer and
estimate the likely costs and benefits of employing different request alternatives. The verbal choices made by
respondents support the assumption that sad persons
formed more pessimistic associations and thus avoided
using impolite forms, whereas happy people used more
direct request forms as a result of their more optimistic
and confident inferences about the likely success of their
requests. It is particularly interesting that mood influenced not only the quality of verbal requests but also the
latency of posing it. Sad persons showed significantly
greater hesitancy, delaying their requests in comparison
to happy individuals. The fact that requests rated as
more risky and unconventional were consistently more
sensitive to affect infusion and were better recalled later
on is consistent with the suggested process-mediation of
these effects.
GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Finding the right words when formulating a strategic

interpersonal message such as a request can be a complex and demanding task. These two experiments were
successful in establishing that transient moods can have
a significant influence on verbal communication strategies such as the use of requests. Experiment 1 found that
sad persons avoided impolite requests more than did
happy individuals and that this effect was accentuated
when considering more risky, unconventional requests
likely to require more elaborate and constructive processing. Experiment 2 confirmed this result with naturalistic requests in an unobtrusive study. This study also
indicated that greater mood effects were linked to more
elaborate processing strategies, as suggested by recall
memory data. Despite the burgeoning interest in the
study of affect and cognition in recent years (Blascovich &
Tomaka, 1996; Mackie & Worth, 1989, 1991; Mayer et al.,
1995; Mayer, Gaschke, Braverman, & Evans, 1992; Sinclair & Mark, 1992), mood effects on real-life social
behaviors such as request production have received only
limited attention so far. The present results are consistent with multiprocess theories such as the AIM and suggest that mood effects on cognition and behavior tend to
be enhanced in circumstances that recruit more elaborate, substantive processing strategies, such as contemplating more risky, unconventional request forms. These
results have several interesting theoretical as well as practical implications.
Theoretical implications. Despite growing interest in the
pragmatics of everyday language use (Bavelas, 1985;
Giles & Wiemann, 1993; Holtgraves, 1997; Holtgraves &

860
Yang, 1990), we still know relatively little about how

affect may influence the formulation of strategic messages. To the extent that request production requires
elaborate inferences as speakers monitor and interpret
the situational requirements of the encounter, mood is
likely to infuse their responses. One of the main contributions of these studies is that they extend the affectinfusion principle to the new domain of request production. The evidence obtained here is also consistent with
prior studies suggesting that even weak and temporary
moods can bring about major shifts in how people deal
with social information (Cervone et al., 1994; Forgas,
1995b; Kaplan, 1991; Mayer et al., 1995; Milberg & Clark,
1988; Sinclair, 1988). Just as happy people are likely to
employ more direct and impolite requests, they have also
been found to be more confident, risky, creative, generous, and helpful in a number of other studies. In contrast, a sad mood seems typically associated with more
negative, slow, and careful reactions to social situations
as well as a reluctance to use impolite and direct requests
as shown here (Berkowitz & Troccoli, 1990; Clark & Isen,
1982; Forgas, 1992a; Mayer et al., 1992; Forgas, in press).
More to the point, these results specifically suggest
that the nature and extent of mood effects on social
behavior may largely depend on the kind of information
processing strategy adopted by a person in a given situation, as predicted by the AIM (Forgas, 1995a). Strategies
that do not require a high level of open and constructive
processing, such as direct access or motivated processing, are less likely to facilitate affect infusion. In contrast,
more risky tasks requiring more generative, substantive
processing should be especially prone to affect infusion
(Fiedler, 1991). The results of both experiments suggest
that preferences for low-risk, routine, polite requests
requiring less elaborate processing show relatively weak
mood sensitivity. In contrast, decisions about more risky,
problematic and impolite requests requiring substantive
processing were far more sensitive to mood effects. The
critical role of processing style in mediating mood
effects on requesting was specifically supported in
Experiment 2 in which recall was most accurate for
requests that were most risky and least conventional and
were thus most likely to be processed substantively.
Although recall rates provide only indirect evidence
about processing differences, these results are consistent
with theoretical predictions of the AIM, and they suggest
that affective influences on thinking, judgments, and
behavior are neither simple nor uniform but are mediated by the kind of processing strategy recruited by features of the task.
Other explanations are also possible, however. Could
it be that participants directly consulted their mood,
using something like the How do I feel about it? heuristic when formulating their requests (Clore et al., 1994)?
There are several potential problems with this account.

First, because requests do not constitute an intrinsically
valenced response category, it is difficult to see how good
or bad mood could be directly used to inform more or
less polite request preferences. In any case, the fact that
positive mood produced less polite and friendly requests
seems clearly inconsistent with a direct affect-asinformation mechanism, and suggests instead that
mood had an indirect influence on peoples interpretation of the request context. Furthermore, according to
Experiment 2, greater mood effects were linked to the
better recall of presumably more extensively processed
informationa pattern that appears inconsistent with
the kind of simple, heuristic processing suggested by the
affect-as-information model. It seems that the overall
pattern of affect infusion demonstrated here is most
consistent with the AIM and the operation of the affectpriming mechanisms in particular.
Practical implications. Requests also play a crucial role
in managing everyday social life. It is through the use of
requests that we achieve our interpersonal objectives;
obtain goods, information, and services; and manage
social situations. Mastering the art of requesting is also a
critical skill in many everyday situations, including negotiation and bargaining encounters (Pruitt & Carnevale,
1993), obtaining help from others (Dovidio, 1984;
Piliavin et al., 1981; Salovey et al., 1991), and managing
and maintaining rewarding personal relationships
(Fletcher & Fitness, 1995; Holmes & Rempel, 1989). The
possibility that low-intensity, transient moods can have a
significant impact on request formulation is likely to
have significant practical implications. For example,
excessive politeness induced by negative mood may ultimately reduce the communication effectiveness of dysphoric individuals. Furthermore, requests that are inappropriately self-effacing may also be perceived as either
manipulative or indicating low self-esteem, leading to
the more critical evaluation of the requester.
Ineffective requesting strategies induced by dysphoria may thus be a critical factor in some of the communication deficits frequently associated with depression and
the negative interpersonal experiences often accumulated by depressed individuals (Ottaviani & Beck, 1988;
Weary, Marsh, & Gleicher, 1991). Excessive positive
affect may also have deleterious effects on strategic interpersonal behaviors. In an intriguing study, Parrott
(1993) found that people will take steps to tone down
their positive affect when expecting a demanding social
encounter, as if they knew that positive mood can also
impair their interpersonal efficacy. Excessive directness
when formulating requests may be one of the dysfunctional consequences of good mood, as demonstrated
here. The use of unduly direct requests may also
threaten peoples ability to maintain their positive

moods, if it produces negative reactions from others. It

seems then that the ability to control, and if necessary,
constrain unduly positive affective states may also be an
important prerequisite for successful strategic interactions with others.
Greater awareness of the behavioral consequences of
positive or negative moods may thus be of considerable
importance to social skills training programs. As moodinduced communication deficiencies are a distinct possibility according to the evidence collected here, it may be
possible to train people to become more aware of how
their good or bad moods may distort their assessment of
and responses to problematic social situations. Social
skills training may thus be employed to compensate for
mood biases in the use of strategic messages such as
requests. Consistent with this suggestion, there is some
convergent evidence that moods can have a significant
influence on how people plan and execute complex strategic encounters such as bargaining and how they react
to messages directed at them (Forgas, 1998a, 1998b; Milberg & Clark, 1988). Mood effects on strategic interpersonal behaviors such as requesting may also have practical implications for the maintenance and management of intimate relationships (Noller & Ruzzene,
1991; Reis & Shaver, 1988). We already know that mood
can influence perceptions and interpretations of complex relationship events, such as conflict episodes (Forgas, 1994). As intimate relationships represent an
extremely rich and complex stimulus domain for most
people (Fletcher & Fitness, 1995), even slight changes in
mood may produce disproportionate selective shifts in
how the relationship and the encounter is assessed and
the kind of communication strategies people employ
(Gottman, 1979).
Limitations and future prospects. Notwithstanding the
clear and convergent results obtained here, there are
also some obvious limitations to these findings. One
important concern relates to the ecological validity of
these results. The first experiment employed hypothetical situations, and the second study relied on a realistic,
unobtrusive procedure investigating real-life requests.
Despite the consistency of the results across these two
different tasks, it would be of considerable interest to
show that similar mood effects can also occur in a wider
range of naturally occurring situations. Preliminary support for the generality of these effects was obtained in
recent studies, demonstrating mood effects in interactive situations (Forgas, 1998a, 1998b, in press). Future
research needs to explore the impact of moods on language use in a variety real-life settings (e.g., Mayer et al.,
1995). This is one of the objectives of our ongoing
research project.
It is also important to note that the mood effects on
requesting demonstrated here are highly process
861
dependent. The multiprocess model underlying this

work specifically emphasizes that mood effects are mediated by the kind of processing strategy people employ.
Processing choices in turn are determined by a variety of
external and internal factors, such as attention direction, motivation, cultural milieu, individual differences,
cognitive capacity, and the like (Berkowitz & Troccoli,
1990; Clark & Isen, 1982; Forgas, 1994, 1995a; Mackie &
Worth, 1989, 1991; Mayer & Salovey, 1988; Salovey &
Mayer, 1990). Future studies may profitably explore how
other pragmatic variables can impact on the processing
strategies used by communicators, and thus mediate the
ensuing mood effects on request production. These two
experiments showed that the perceived risk and conventionality of different request forms was one such variable
capable of recruiting more or less substantive processing
strategies. Other factors, such as situational difficulty,
task complexity, cognitive capacity, and motivational
states can also produce different processing strategies,
and they deserve to be further explored in future work
on affect and language use.
Further experiments may also benefit from developing additional ways of measuring processing strategies,
in addition to the recall measures used here that provide
rather indirect information about processing differences. For example, techniques could be developed to
record and analyze processing latencies as happy and sad
persons formulate more or less direct requests in different situations. Such procedures have been recently inaugurated in studies investigating mood effects on memory and judgments, and they yielded encouraging
results that showed that affect infusion is significantly
mediated by processing latency (Forgas, 1992b, 1994,
1995b; 1998b; Forgas & Bower, 1987). Using requests in
our daily interactions presents people with a particularly
complex cognitive task. Selecting the right form of
words requires sophisticated inferences about the partner and the context, relying on selective online access to
a rich array of stored memories and associations about
past interaction episodes. Based on the AIM, it was
argued here that temporary moods may influence how
people interpret a situation and the kind of requests they
produce through selectively priming mood-congruent
thoughts and ideas to be used in constructing a
response. These experiments confirm this pattern and
show that mood effects are accentuated when more
elaborate processing is required by more unconventional, impolite requests.
It seems that more confident and optimistic inferences in good mood result in more direct and less polite
requests, whereas bad moods may prime more pessimistic expectations and therefore more cautious and polite
requests. These results are consistent with recent multiprocess accounts of affect and cognition (Fiedler, 1991;

862
Forgas, 1995a). Much has been discovered about the

pragmatic rules that govern language use in recent
years, yet far too little is known about how affect influences strategic communication. Further research on the
subtle influence of affect on verbal communication
should be of considerable theoretical as well as practical
interest, and it should contribute to our understanding
of the psychological mechanisms underlying strategic
interpersonal behavior.
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Revision accepted June 2, 1998


Forgas, J - Feeling and Speaking, Mood Effects On Verbal Communication Strategies

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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Feeling and Speaking: Mood Effects on Verbal Communication Strategies

Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

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AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOG Y BULLETIN

Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

Feeling and Speaking: Mood Effects

What is the role of affect in language use, and the production of

Requesting as an Interpersonal Strategy

erbal messages are a key component of strategic

Authors Note: This project was supported by a Special Investigator Award

Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

that requests can be of four types, designed to obtain

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

more than just heuristic processing, as it requires the

relying on their stored memories and inferences to

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Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

realize that there is no chalk. Since you want to write on

from 1 = extremely unlikely to use to 7 = extremely likely to

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

ses was detected. The aims and objectives of the research

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Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

The differential influence of positive, control, and negative

a sad mood than by participants experiencing a positive,

However, given what we know about the complex

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

Mood validation. An analysis of self-rated mood on the

All participants agreed to this request and proceeded to

Mood effects on requests. Participants responses were

Materials and procedure. The same mood induction

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Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

error in subsequent analyses. The factor analysis using

The effects of positive, control and negative mood on the

Request latency. Not all participants made their

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

analysis, requests were identified as polite, intermediate,

The effects of positive, control, and negative mood on

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Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

It is also critical to examine not only the significance

In this study, people faced the task of making a

Finding the right words when formulating a strategic

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

Yang, 1990), we still know relatively little about how

There are several potential problems with this account.

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Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS

moods, if it produces negative reactions from others. It

dependent. The multiprocess model underlying this

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

Forgas, 1995a). Much has been discovered about the

Cunningham, M. R. (1988). Does happiness mean friendliness?

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Forgas / MOOD AND REQUESTS