Mood's effect on judgment: The role of empathy and mindfulness in decision-making

Empirical research on mood congruent decision-making has focused on valence-based emotions (positive vs. negative); the successful prediction of decision-making in individuals who are experiencing emotions of similar valence has remained a difficult task. Contemporary researchers have investigated the connection between an individual's processing strategies on mood-congruency, assuming equivalency across positive and negative valences; however, these theories remain limited in their assumption that all negative emotions are experienced similarly and they lack insight into what individual differences play a role in decision-making. The present study hypothesized that anger and sadness operate differentially when influencing decision-making, and that empathy and self-awareness may prevent mood-congruent decisions. Subjects included 160 ethnically diverse men and women enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course who received research credit for their participation. The results revealed that primed mood affected decision-making with more guilty judgments being made in the neutral group than in the sad group. Empathy decreased the frequency and level of guilty judgments for individuals primed for sadness, and mindfulness awareness decreased guilty judgments when individuals were primed for anger. These results confirmed the Appraisal Tendency Framework's model that negatively valenced moods have different effects on decision-making, and suggest directions for future search in mood congruent decision-making.