Is seeking bad mood cognitively demanding? Contra-hedonic orientation and working-memory capacity in everyday life.

Autor/inn/en	Riediger, Michaela; Wrzus, Cornelia; Schmiedek, Florian; Wagner, Gert G.; Lindenberger, Ulman
Titel	Is seeking bad mood cognitively demanding? Contra-hedonic orientation and working-memory capacity in everyday life.
Quelle	In: Emotion / American Psychological Association, 11 (2011) 3, S. 656-665 PDF als Volltext Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Beigaben	grafische Darstellungen; Literaturangaben S. 664-665
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1528-3542; 1931-1516
DOI	10.1037/a0022756
Schlagwörter	Empirische Forschung; Methodologie; Affekt; Arbeitsgedächtnis; Emotion; Entwicklungspsychologie; Kognitive Kompetenz; Wohlbefinden; Alltag; Wirkung; Deutschland
Abstract	Hedonism, or wanting to feel good, is central to human motivation. At times, however, people also seek to maintain or enhance negative affect or to dampen positive affect, and this can be instrumental for the later attainment of their goals. Here, we investigate the assumption that such contra-hedonic orientation is cognitively more demanding than prohedonic orientation, above and beyond the effects of momentary affective experience. We provided 378 participants with mobile phones that they carried with them for 3 weeks while pursuing their daily routines. The phones prompted participants at least 54 times to report their current affect-regulation orientation and to work on two trials of a cognitively demanding working memory task. As expected, contra-hedonic orientation was substantially less prevalent than prohedonic orientation. It was reported in 15% of the measurement occasions. Participants who reported on average more contra-hedonic orientation showed lower average working memory performance throughout the study interval. Further, controlling for the effects of accompanying affective experiences, momentary occurrences of contra-hedonic orientation were associated with temporary declines in working memory performance within individuals, and this could neither be explained by lacking task compliance nor by other characteristics of the individual or the situation. Prohedonic orientation showed a considerably smaller association with working memory performance. These findings are consistent with the view that contra-hedonic orientation is accompanied by momentarily more diminished cognitive resources than is prohedonic orientation. (DIPF/Orig.).
Erfasst von	DIPF \| Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation, Frankfurt am Main
Update	2011/4