Alice M. Isen

Positive Affect Facilitates Creative Problem Solving

Four experiments indicated that positive affect, induced by means of seeing a few minutes of a comedy film or by means of receiving a small bag of candy, improved performance on two tasks that are generally regarded as requiring creative ingenuity: Dunckers (1945) candle task and M. T. Mednick, S. A. Mednick, and E. V. Mednicks (1964) Remote Associates Test. One condition in which negative affect was induced and two in which subjects engaged in physical exercise (intended to represent affectless arousal) failed to produce comparable improvements in creative performance. The influence of positive affect on creativity was discussed in terms of a broader theory of the impact of positive affect on cognitive organization.

A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition.

Positive affect systematically influences performance on many cognitive tasks. A new neuropsychological theory is proposed that accounts for many of these effects by assuming that positive affect is associated with increased brain dopamine levels. The theory predicts or accounts for influences of positive affect on olfaction, the consolidation of long-term (i.e., episodic) memories, working memory, and creative problem solving. For example, the theory assumes that creative problem solving is improved, in part, because increased dopamine release in the anterior cingulate improves cognitive flexibility and facilitates the selection of cognitive perspective.

Positive Affect, Cognitive Processes, and Social Behavior

Publisher Summary This chapter examines some of the literature demonstrating an impact of affect on social behavior. It will consider the influence of affect on cognition in an attempt to further understand on the way cognitive processes may mediate the effect of feelings on social behavior. The chapter describes the recent works suggesting an influence of positive affect on flexibility in cognitive organization (that is, in the perceived relatedness of ideas) and the implications of this effect for social interaction. The goal of this research is to expand the understanding of social behavior and the factors, such as affect, that influence interaction among people. Another has been to extend the knowledge of affect, both as one of these determinants of social behavior and in its own right. And a third has been to increase the understanding of cognitive processes, especially as they play a role in social interaction. Most recently, cognitive and social psychologists have investigated ways in which affective factors may participate in cognitive processes (not just interrupt them) and have begun to include affect as a factor in more comprehensive models of cognition. The research described in the chapter has focused primarily on feelings rather than intense emotion, because feelings are probably the most frequent affective experiences. The chapter focuses primarily on positive affect.

The Influence of Positive Affect on the Unusualness of Word Associations

A pilot study and two experiments investigated the influence of positive affect, induced in three differing ways, on the uniqueness of word associations. Persons in the positive-affect conditions gave more unusual first-associates to neutral words, according to the Palermo & Jenkins (1964) norms, than did subjects in the control conditions. In Study 3, where word type (positive, neutral, negative) was a second factor along with affect, in a between-subjects design, associates to positive words were also more unusual and diverse than were those to other words. These results were related to those of studies suggesting that positive affect may facilitate creative problem solving and to other work suggesting an impact of positive feelings on cognitive organization.

The influence of positive affect and visual access on the discovery of integrative solutions in bilateral negotiation

The present study investigated the influence of positive affect and visual access on the process and outcome of negotiation in an integrative bargaining task. Visual access was crossed with positive affect in a 2 × 2 design. The results supported the hypotheses that positive affect would reduce the use of contentious tactics and would increase joint benefit, just as had been found for the presence of a barrier that eliminated visual access to the other negotiator (S. Lewis & W. Fry, 1977, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 20, 75–92). This latter finding was also replicated. Only when bargainers were face to face and not in a positive state was there heavy use of contentious tactics, reduced trade-offs, and fewer integrative solutions. This means that positive affect can overcome the competitive processes and poor outcomes normally observed in face-to-face integrative bargaining. The results are discussed in terms of the cognitive dynamics of negotiation.

The Influence of Positive Affect on Variety Seeking among Safe, Enjoyable Products

In three brand-choice experiments executed on personal computers, a significant interaction was found regarding the influence of positive affect, induced by the gift of a small bag of candy or sugarless gum, on variety-seeking behavior. In three food categories (crackers, soup, and snack foods), a positive-affect manipulation increased variety-seeking behavior relative to that in the control conditions, when circumstances did not make unpleasant or negative features of the items in the choice task salient. However, when a negative feature, such as the possibility that a product would taste bad, was made more salient, there was no difference in variety-seeking behavior between the subjects who had received the small gift and the control subjects. Positive affect was also found (1) to increase the tendency of subjects to categorize nontypical items as belonging to a predefined product category, (2) to increase credibility that a product designed to reduce negative health effects would be successful, and (3) to increase variety-seeking behavior in choice sets containing the latter two types of items.

The influence of positive affect on the components of expectancy motivation

The influence of positive affect on expectancy motivation was investigated in 2 studies. The results of Study 1 indicated that positive affect improved peoples performance and affected their perceptions of expectancy and valence. In Study 1, in which outcomes depended on chance, positive affect did not influence peoples perceptions of instrumentality. In Study 2, in which the link between performance and outcomes was specified, positive affect influenced all 3 components of expectancy motivation. Together, the results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that positive affect interacts with task conditions in influencing motivation and that its influence on motivation occurs not through general effects, such as response bias or general activation, but rather through its influence on the cognitive processes involved in motivation.

The influence of positive affect on acceptable level of risk: The person with a large canoe has a large worry

Abstract A study investigated the influence of positive affect, induced by receipt of a small bag of candy, on risk preference and on thoughts about losing. Results indicated, compatibly with previous findings, an interaction between affect and level of risk: Where stakes were high, persons in whom positive affect had been induced, in comparison with those in a control group, set a higher level of probability of winning as the minimum necessary for taking the bet. Where stakes were low, persons in the positive-affect condition tended to be more risk prone (to set a lower probability level) than control subjects. Results of a thought-listing task paralleled those of the risk measure, indicating an interaction between affect condition and risk level, such that persons in the positive-affect condition contemplating a high-stakes bet, but not those considering a low-stakes bet, reported more thoughts about losing than control subjects.

POSITIVE AFFECT IMPROVES CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING AND INFLUENCES REPORTED SOURCE OF PRACTICE SATISFACTION IN PHYSICIANS

A study investigated whether creative problem solving and reported sources of satisfaction from the practice of medicine are influenced by the induction of positive affect among physicians. Physicians randomly assigned to the positive affect group received a small package of candy. The control group received no treatment. The affect group scored better on the creativity measure than did the control group, (p=0.028, one-tailed). Regarding practice satisfaction, all physicians perceived humanism as more important than extrinsic motivation as a source of satisfaction from the practice of medicine (p<0.001). However, a significant interaction between affect and source of satisfaction revealed that the affect group attributed more relative importance to humanism and less relative importance to extrinsic motivation compared with the control group (p=0.04). In contrast, physicians in a third condition, in which they read phrases reflective of the humanistic satisfactions from medicine, did not differ from the control group in the creativity test or in the practice-satisfaction questionnaire. We conclude that induction of positive affect among physicians can improve their creative problem solving and can influence the sources of practice satisfaction they report.

The Influence of Positive Affect on Clinical Problem solving

This study investigated the influence of positive affect, induced by report of success on an anagram task, on medical decision making among third-year medical students. The subjects were asked to decide which one of six hypothetical patients, each of whom had a solitary pulmonary nodule, was most likely to have lung cancer. They were asked to verbalize their clinical reasoning as they solved the problem. The positive-affect and control groups did not differ in the tendency to make a correct choice, but subjects in the positive-affect condition were significantly earlier in identifying their choices. These subjects were also significantly more likely to go beyond the assigned task, expressing interest in the cases of the other patients and trying to think about their diagnoses, even though that task was not assigned. The positive-affect subjects also showed evidence of configural or integrative consideration of the material to a reliably greater extent than did control subjects, and there was significantly less evidence of confusion or disorganization in their protocols than in those of controls. These findings are compatible with earlier work suggesting a different organizational process and greater efficiency in decision making among people in whom positive affect had been induced, and with recent work suggesting that positive affect facilitates flexibility and inte gration in problem solving. They also indicate that these effects may apply to the problem- solving strategies of professionals in clinical probem-solving situations. Key words: positive affect; medical decision making; problem solving; diagnostic reasoning. (Med Decis Making 1991;11:221-227)