A Broader Conception of Mood Experience

Abstract

The experience of a mood consists of more than emotional states such as happiness, anger, sadness, or fear. It also includes mood management processes that can facilitate or inhibit the experience of the mood reaction. A multidomain framework is described for organizing such experience, and 2 studies are reported that analyzed separately emotion-related and emotion-management-related mood experiences. In both studies, emotion-related experience, including physical, emotional, and cognitive subdomains, could be characterized by Pleasant-Unpleasant and Arousal-Calm dimensions. Also, both studies yielded evidence for the emotion-management dimensions of Plans of Action, Suppression, and Denial. These broader dimensions of mood experience predicted criterion variables such as empathy better than Pleasant-Unpleasant and Arousal-Calm dimensions alone.