The Influence of Mood and Motivation on Cognitive Flexibility

The influence of mood and motivation on cognitive processes has enjoyed a significant amount of attention in the last few decades, but due to inconsistencies in methodologies and tasks conclusions remain subject to debate. The questions addressed in this thesis are how: 1) positive mood, 2) negative mood, and 3) depressive symptoms influence or relate to cognitive flexibility using a category learning paradigm, and the final question addressed in this thesis is whether 4) regulatory focus and regulatory fit influence cognitive flexibility using a more naturalistic categorization task in which there are no correct or incorrect responses. Category learning and categorization tasks provide well-controlled and empirically validated paradigms in which to study the effects of mood and motivation on cognitive flexibility. Chapter 2 demonstrates that depressive symptoms are negatively related to complex rule-based category learning while positive mood is positively related to rule-based category learning, but positive mood and lifetime history of hypomanic symptoms contributed the most unique variance to rule-based category learning performance. Chapter 3 demonstrates that manipulated positive, but not negative, mood enhances performance on a complex rule-based category learning task, but mood does not significantly influence non-rule-based category learning. Chapter 4 demonstrates that a promotion regulatory focus results in higher low typicality exemplar ratings than a prevention regulatory focus, and additionally demonstrates that negative mood accounts for most of this effect. This represents the first series of studies to examine the influence of mood on category learning and demonstrates that positive mood enhances and is positively related to rule-based category learning

Online Mindfulness Training Increases Well-Being, Trait Emotional Intelligence, and Workplace Competency Ratings: A Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial

A randomized waitlist-controlled trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of an online 8-week mindfulness-based training program in a sample of adults employed fulltime at a Fortune 100 company in the United States. Baseline measures were collected in both intervention and control groups. Following training, the intervention group (N = 37) showed statistically significant increases in resilience and positive mood, and significant decreases in stress and negative mood. There were no reported improvements in the wait-list control group (N = 65). Trait mindfulness and emotional intelligence (EI) were also assessed. Following the intervention mindfulness intervention participants reported increases in trait mindfulness and increases on all trait EI facets with the exception of empathy. The control group did not report any positive changes in these variables, and reported reductions in resilience and increases in negative mood. Finally, both self and colleague ratings of workplace competencies were collected in the intervention group only and provided preliminary evidence that mindfulness training enhanced performance on key leadership competencies including competencies related to decisiveness and creativity. The present study demonstrates the effectiveness of an online-based mindfulness training program for enhancing well-being, self-perceptions of emotional intelligence, and workplace performance

Online Mindfulness Training Increases Well-Being, Trait Emotional Intelligence, and Workplace Competency Ratings: A Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial

A randomized waitlist-controlled trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of an online 8-week mindfulness-based training program in a sample of adults employed fulltime at a Fortune 100 company in the United States. Baseline measures were collected in both intervention and control groups. Following training, the intervention group (N = 37) showed statistically significant increases in resilience and positive mood, and significant decreases in stress and negative mood. There were no reported improvements in the wait-list control group (N = 65). Trait mindfulness and emotional intelligence (EI) were also assessed. Following the intervention mindfulness intervention participants reported increases in trait mindfulness and increases on all trait EI facets with the exception of empathy. The control group did not report any positive changes in these variables, and reported reductions in resilience and increases in negative mood. Finally, both self and colleague ratings of workplace competencies were collected in the intervention group only and provided preliminary evidence that mindfulness training enhanced performance on key leadership competencies including competencies related to decisiveness and creativity. The present study demonstrates the effectiveness of an online-based mindfulness training program for enhancing well-being, self-perceptions of emotional intelligence, and workplace performance

Better mood and better performance. Learning rule-described categories is enhanced by positive mood.

Theories of mood and its effect on cognitive processing suggest that positive mood may allow for increased cognitive flexibility. This increased flexibility is associated with the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, both of which play crucial roles in hypothesis testing and rule selection. Thus, cognitive tasks that rely on behaviors such as hypothesis testing and rule selection may benefit from positive mood, whereas tasks that do not rely on such behaviors should not be affected by positive mood. We explored this idea within a category-learning framework. Positive, neutral, and negative moods were induced in our subjects, and they learned either a rule-described or a non-rule-described category set. Subjects in the positive-mood condition performed better than subjects in the neutral- or negative-mood conditions in classifying stimuli from rule-described categories. Positive mood also affected the strategy of subjects who classified stimuli from non-rule-described categories