to be addressed, which in turn leads to a focus on details (Schwarz, 1990;
Schwarz & Clore, 1996). In contrast, a positive mood indicates that every-
thing is fine resulting in heuristic processing of information. In other words,
when a person is in a negative mood, he is more motivated to respond to the
situation and is more likely to pay attention to the details in the situation
whereas when a person is in a positive mood, he is less motivated to attend
to the situation and will therefore use less effortful strategies such as general
knowledge structures or schemas to interpret and react to the situation.
This reliance on general knowledge structures under a positive mood is a re-
sult of an evolutionary bias suggesting that effort is not needed under a pos-
itive mood. Similar to the resource allocation model, the affect-as-in-
formation theory is not able to account for recent empirical findings (e.g.,
Bless et al., 1996).
More recently, researchers studying affect and cognition have sought to
develop integrated models that account for the rather inconsistent results
(Forgas, 2000b). In particular, two theories regarding the role of moods in
cognitive processing present a more nuanced view, which can account for the
diverse set of findings in the literature: Bless’ (2000) mood-and-general-
knowledge theory and Fiedler’s (2000) dual-force model. As with the older
theories in this field, both of these theories focus on the processing of infor-
mation during a short, clearly defined situation. Furthermore, they focus ex-
clusively on valence and do not consider the effect of arousal or the interac-
tive affects of arousal and valence.
Bless (2000) developed his mood-and-general-knowledge theory based on
the affect-as-information model and the failure of this model to fully explain
empirical findings. The basic relation of moods to cognitive processing is the
same as the affect-as-information model. Positive moods are associated with
heuristic, top-down processing while negative moods are associated with
more systematic, situation-specific processing. A major difference between
these theories, however, is that Bless’ theory does not assume, as does the af-
fect-as-information theory, that people in a negative mood are motivated
(and thus use adaptive processing) and those in a positive mood are unmoti-
vated (and thus use maladaptive processing). Rather, Bless (2000) suggested
that a positive mood signals that it is acceptable to rely on general knowledge
structures because these structures are usually useful in benign situations. In
contrast, a negative mood suggests that there is a problem and problems usu-
ally differ from the norm; thus, a negative mood indicates that one should fo-
cus on the specific situation and not rely on general knowledge structures. As
this reliance on general knowledge structures under a positive mood is not
due to lack of motivation, the individual is likely to use those saved resources
for processing other aspects of the situation. Bless (2000) also suggested that
although a happy mood leads to reliance on general knowledge structures
such as scripts, when a person detects that information is not consistent with
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