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Biomedical subjects

A M Isen

Publications and source records attributed to A M Isen.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Influence of positive affect on the subjective utility of gains and losses: it is just not worth the risk.

A modification of the procedure originally used by Davidson, Suppes, and Siegel (1956) to measure subjective utility was used to study the influence of positive affect on individuals' perceived value (utility) functions. Results indicated, as expected, that persons in whom positive affect had been induced showed a more negative subjective utility for losses than did controls. This indicates that losses seem worse to people who are feeling happy than to those in a control condition. The subjective utility functions of the two groups did not differ as much, however, when people were considering potential gain. Thus, at least in the situation tested in this study, potential gains did not seem to be more appealing (nor less so) for affect subjects than they did for controls. These findings are discussed in relation to theoretical issues in decision making and work suggesting that positive affect can promote increased sensitivity to losses in situations of potential meaningful loss.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

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: Duncker's (1945) candle task and M. T. Mednick, S. A. Mednick, and E. V. Mednick's (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.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

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.

Affect↗
PubMed1978

Affect, accessibility of material in memory, and behavior: a cognitive loop?

Two studies investigated the effect of good mood on cognitive processes. In the first study, conducted in a shopping mall, a positive feeling state was induced by giving subjects a free gift, and good mood, thus induced, was found to improve subjects' evaluations of the performance and service records of products they owned. In the second study, in which affect was induced by having subjects win or lose a computer game in a laboratory setting, subjects who had won the game were found to be better able to recall positive material in memory. The results of the two studies are discussed in terms of the effect that feelings have on accessibility of cognitions. In addition, the nature of affect and the relationship between good mood and behavior (such as helping) are discussed in terms of this proposed cognitive process.

Affect↗
PubMedDate not supplied

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 interesting in the cases of the other patients and trying to think about their diagnosis, 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 integration in problem solving. They also indicate that these effects may apply to the problem-solving strategies of professionals in clinical problem-solving situations.

Affect↗