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Mood and Tolerance: Self-Regulation in PoliticalJudgmentsTodd G. Shields a , Ellen D. Riggle a & Alan L. Ellis ba Department of Political Science , University ofKentucky , USAb Department of Psychology , University ofKentucky , USAPublished online: 02 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Todd G. Shields , Ellen D. Riggle & Alan L. Ellis (1994) Moodand Tolerance: Self-Regulation in Political Judgments, The Journal of Psychology:Interdisciplinary and Applied, 128:3, 357-359, DOI: 10.1080/00223980.1994.9712740

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The Journal of Psychology 128(3), 351-359

Mood and Tolerance: Self-Regulation in Political Judgments

TODD G. SHIELDS ELLEN D. RIGGLE

Department of Political Science University of Kentucky

ALAN L. ELLIS Department of Psychology

University of Kentucky

MOOD has been shown to influence widely disparate phenomena, including deci- sion making, clinical depression, and memory (Bower, 1981; Isen, 1984). Subjects experiencing mood manipulations have been found to engage in “self- regulation” of their evaluations, decisions, and behavior, resulting in an “overcom- pensation” effect (Blaney, 1986; Morris & Reilly, 1987; Parrot & Sabini, 1990). The present study underscores this phenomena (dubbed “mood-incongruent re- call” within the memory and affect literature) in a novel and important area: citi- zens’ tolerance of various political groups.

Stouffer (1955), and more recently Sullivan, Pierson, and Markus (1982), have consistently shown that a majority of Americans are intolerant of political outgroups such as neo-Nazis, homosexuals, and communists. This intolerance is displayed through opposition to the extension of civil rights to members of these

Address correspondence to Ellen Riggle, Department of Political Science, 1615 Patterson Ofice Tower, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027.

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groups (e.g., free speech and assembly). We hypothesized that mood would affect the amount of tolerance or intolerance expressed.

Participants in the present study were 85 undergraduate students from the University of Kentucky who were told they were participating in an experiment examining the relationships between memory and various movie clips. Students were assigned to one of three groups: neutral, sad, or happy moods, which were manipulated by showing each group a 10-min movie clip. Participants then re- ceived a questionnaire assessing their degree of tolerance of six political groups and their present mood; demographic information was also included. The intoler- ance questions were presented in both a general principle (e.g., “People should have the freedom to express their opinions publicly”) and specific application (e.g., “Representatives of a neo-Nazi group should be allowed to state their opin- ions publicly”).

An index of tolerance ( M ) was computed for subjects in each group by aver- aging over the tolerance questions (coded so that 1 was the least tolerant and 5 was the most tolerant answer). A mood manipulation check confirmed significant differences between the neutral and experimental groups: for positive affect, F( 1 , 84) = 2. IS, p < .13, and for negative affect, F( 1, 84) = 5.70, p < .OOS.

Isomorphic with the “mood and memory” literature, subjects in the happy and sad groups overcompensated for their manipulated mood states by expressing more tolerant positions than subjects in the neutral mood manipulation. An analy- sis of variance (ANOVA) yielded a statistically (although marginally) significant difference in responses between the neutral group ( M = 3.27) and the happy (M = 3.7) and sad ( M = 3.7) groups, F(1, 84) = 3.17, p < .08.

Substantively, subjects experiencing the sad mood manipulation tended to engage in self-regulation and overcompensation for the undesired mood by posi- tioning themselves in a more tolerant and accepting political outlook. Subjects experiencing the happy mood manipulation, consistent with research showing that they desired to maintain that mood (Carlson, Charlin, & Miller, 1988; Fiske & Taylor, 199 1 ) tended to maintain their happy state and were also more tolerant than neutral subjects. Thus participants who experienced a mood manipulation engaged in self-regulation, which, in this study, resulted in greater political tol- erance.

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Shields, Riggle, & Ellis 359

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Received January 22, 1992

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