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ENHANCING INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION:

POSITIVE MOOD EFFECTS DONNA W EBSTER N ELSON Winthrop University I tested the possibility that positive affect would promote the design of effective interpersonal communication. Participants were 44 male and 96 female undergraduates at a mid-sized university in the Southeastern United States, who were induced to experience positive or neutral affect and were then asked to design communications relating to 15 abstract stimuli.

Results indicated that, compared with the participants who had experienced neutral affect, those in a positive mood constructed messages that contained greater detail and more literal information for another person (vs. messages intended for their own use at a later time).

This suggests that those experiencing positive affect made adjustments to account for the perspective of the recipient. That effect was not observed for participants experiencing a neutral mood. My findings suggest that effective interpersonal communication depends, in part, on the affective state of the communicator.

Keywords: positive affect, mood, interpersonal communication, audience design, emotion.

The influence of mood states on cognitive and social psychological processes is a topic of considerable interest to psychologists. In her broaden-and-build theory, Fredrickson (2001) proposes that positive affect fosters creativity and an open-minded mentality. In support of this notion, empirical researchers have demonstrated that positive affect enhances novel thinking (e.g., Isen, Johnson, Mertz, & Robinson, 1985), improves performance on tasks requiring ingenuity (e.g., Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987), increases fluency and flexibility of thought (Tan & Qu, 2015), and facilitates social problem solving (Nelson & Sim, 2014). Positive affect has also been shown to enhance empathy and perspective taking between persons who have divergent perspectives (Nelson, 2009).

http://dx.doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2016.44.9.1535 1535 Donna Webster Nelson, Department of Psychology, Winthrop University.

The author thanks Brandy Werner and Brittany Brock for help with data collection.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Donna Webster Nelson, Department of Psychology, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 29733, USA. Email: [email protected] POSITIVE MOOD AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 1536 My current interest was in exploring whether or not affective states would influence other social processes that involve interpersonal perspective taking.

One such phenomenon is interpersonal communication. Researchers have indicated that a positive mood promotes disclosure of intimate and varied information about the self and that personal disclosures of this sort represent an effective strategy for enhancing interpersonal relations (Forgas, 2011).

Successful interpersonal exchanges are also more likely when communicators adapt their messages to account for the unique perspective and preexisting knowledge of their intended audience (Fussell & Krauss, 1989). More research is needed to determine whether or not a positive mood may facilitate the design of messages that are understood as intended by the sender. If one fails to assume the perspective of a message recipient, one is less likely to design a message that is understood as intended. As positive affect bolsters perspective taking, it follows that it may also promote the formulation of effective interpersonal communication. To test this possibility, I conducted an experiment in which I analyzed the composition of messages created by individuals experiencing either a positive or neutral mood. I expected those in a positive (vs. neutral) mood to adjust messages more frequently to account for the perspective of the intended recipient, by including greater detail in the messages and focusing on common knowledge shared with the recipient.

Method Participants I recruited 44 male and 96 female undergraduates at a mid-sized Southeastern university in the United States to take part in my study. The majority of the participants (96%) ranged in age from 18 to 24 years. The remainder (4%) were 25 years or older.

Procedure Mood induction. Participants were randomly assigned to a positive or neutral mood condition. In each instance, they read a string of 25 statements formulated by Seibert and Ellis (1991) as a method for inducing the intended mood state. Affect manipulation check. Participants responded to nine items taken from the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988).

Specifically, they rated the extent to which they felt alert, interested, determined, excited, enthusiastic, inspired, proud, attentive, and active, on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely). A composite positive affect score for each participant was computed by averaging these responses. POSITIVE MOOD AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 1537 Message design. Participants were asked to design communications relating to 15 abstract stimuli (see Figure 1). This task was modeled after that used by Fussell and Krauss (1989). Participants read instructions that explained how their descriptions of the abstract stimuli would be used in a second phase of the experiment during an identification task. This identification task would require participants to recognize the appropriate figure, based on the message they had designed. Participants were told either to design a message for another (unknown) student or to design a message that they themselves would use to complete the identification task. For those writing descriptions for another student, compared to those writing for themselves, greater perspective taking should result in messages that contained more literal descriptions (referring to specific properties of the figure and reflecting knowledge that would most likely be shared by the other student) and more lengthy descriptions (including greater detail). Independent coders rated the extent to which descriptions contained literal content in addition to recording the number of words contained in each message. Disagreements among the coders were resolved through discussion. Figure 1. Examples of abstract stimuli for which participants composed descriptions. Results Manipulation Check An independent samples t test was conducted to assess positive affect as a function of mood condition. Results revealed that, as expected, those in the positive mood condition experienced more positive affect (M = 2.94, SD = 0.73, n = 71) than those in the neutral condition (M = 2.42, SD = 0.74, n = 69), t(140) = -4.15, p < .001.

Dependent Measures A mixed model analysis of variance was conducted with two levels of mood condition and two levels of recipient condition on the ratings of literal content. POSITIVE MOOD AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 1538 This yielded a significant interaction effect, F(1, 136) = 3.73, p < .05. A positive mood increased literal descriptions in communications directed toward an unknown student (M = 6.72, SD = 6.32, n = 36) compared to those designed for the self (M = 3.14, SD = 3.37, n = 35). No such differences were found among participants in the neutral condition when comparing communications directed toward an unknown student (M = 3.57, SD = 4.06, n = 38) to those developed for the participant himself or herself (M = 3.06, SD = 4.30, n = 30). A similar pattern was found when testing the interaction between mood condition and recipient on message length F(1, 136) = 3.29, p < .07. In the positive mood condition, messages intended for another student included more words (M = 12.18, SD = 7.51, n = 36) than did those intended for the self (M = 7.82, SD = 5.04, n = 35).

No comparable effects were found for neutral mood participants when comparing communications directed toward an unknown student (M = 8.24, SD = 5.22, n = 38) to those developed for the participant himself or herself (M = 7.53, SD = 3.27, n = 31).

Discussion My objective was to explore whether or not positive affect would enhance the design of effective social communication. I predicted that a positive mood would promote construction of interpersonal messages that included literal and lengthy content, to reflect the perspective of the recipient and facilitate comprehension. I also predicted that when experiencing a neutral, compared to positive, mood, communicators would be less focused on conveying precise or detailed information to the intended recipient. My results supported these predictions and are consistent with previous findings that suggest a positive mood enhances perspective taking (Nelson, 2009). Those who were most likely to assume the perspective of the recipient took more deliberate steps to create messages that accounted for that alternative perspective. These findings have important implications for contexts where individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives communicate with one another. In short, a positive mood can help to prevent social misunderstandings, and can enable diverse persons to relate to one another more effectively than can a neutral mood.

My study has limitations related to external validity because the focus was on designing communications about abstract stimuli in a laboratory context.

Furthermore, all of the communications were designed for the self or for strangers. This paradigm allowed for precise testing of the cause-and-effect relationship between mood and communication design. However, a future profitable line of research would be to examine the design of communications under varying affective states, in naturalistic settings, and between both strangers and persons who are well acquainted. POSITIVE MOOD AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 1539 References Forgas, J. P. (2011). Affective influences on self-disclosure: Mood effects on the intimacy and reciprocity of disclosing personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 449–461. http://doi.org/dm82b8 Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and- build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218–226. http://doi.org/d2mt85 Fussell, S. R., & Krauss, R. M. (1989). The effects of intended audience on message production and comprehension. Reference in a common ground framework. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 203–219. http://doi.org/fhsfr2 Isen, A. M., Daubman, K. A., & Nowicki, G. P. (1987). Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1122–1131. http://doi.org/ddjfsw Isen, A. M., Johnson, M. M., Mertz, E., & Robinson, G. F. (1985). The influence of positive affect on the unusualness of word associations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1413–1426. http://doi.org/c9s4zd Nelson, D. W. (2009). Feeling good and open-minded: The impact of positive affect on cross-cultural empathic responding. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 53–63. http://doi.org/bcbk9b Nelson, D. W., & Sim, E. K. (2014). Positive affect facilitates social problem solving. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 44, 635–642. http://doi.org/bfks Seibert, P. S., & Ellis, H. C. (1991). A convenient self-referencing mood induction procedure. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 29, 121–124. http://doi.org/bfkt Tan, C.-S., & Qu, L. (2015). Stability of the positive mood effect on creativity when task switching, practice effect, and test item differences are taken into consideration. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 49, 94–110. http://doi.org/bfkv Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070. http://doi.org/ck3 Copyright ofSocial Behavior &Personality: aninternational journalisthe property of Society forPersonality Researchanditscontent maynotbecopied oremailed tomultiple sites orposted toalistserv without thecopyright holder'sexpresswrittenpermission.

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