Don't Worry, Be Happy? Neuroticism, Trait -Consistent Mood Regulation, and Performance

Abstract

65 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004.People regulate their mood to feel good or to achieve instrumental success (e.g., Martin, 2000). The present studies show that when driven by performance goals, people can be motivated to experience unpleasant mood states when they are trait-consistent, because of their instrumental benefits (Tamir, Robinson, & Clore, 2002). In 4 studies, neurotic individuals preferred to increase their level of worry, as indicated both by self-reported preferences (Study 1) and by actual behavior in experimental settings (Studies 2--4). As predicted, such preferences were evident only when expecting to perform cognitively demanding tasks but not when expecting a non-demanding task (Study 2). Study 4 provides initial evidence that such anti-hedonic mood regulation may lead to beneficial effects on performance.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD