will only affect social judgments (and presumably other types of cognition)
under specified conditions. More specifically, the influence of mood on the
content of one’s thoughts varies based on the types of cognitive processing
used. Two types of processes, direct access and motivated processing, do not
result in mood congruent effects, while two other types of processing, heuris-
tic and substantive processing, do.
Forgas (1995) proposed that neither direct nor motivated processing al-
lows for the infusion of mood into thinking because neither type of process-
ing requires open, constructive processing. That is, with direct processing, in-
formation is quickly recalled from long-term memory. This does not call for
any construction of knowledge; therefore, there is no opportunity for mood
to infuse thinking. With motivated processing, there are predetermined
search patterns associated with motivational objectives, which again do not
provide an opportunity for mood to infiltrate thinking. Motivated processing
here refers to specific situations where there is pressure for a particular judg-
ment to occur; this does not necessarily refer to instances where one has a
particular goal (e.g., a goal to learn and understand).
In contrast, both heuristic processing and substantive processing are
open and constructive, thus allowing mood to influence the content of judg-
ments and thinking (Forgas, 1995). Forgas (2000a) described heuristic
processing as involving minimal effort. This type of processing is used for
simple or typical tasks of little relevance to the person. For heuristic pro-
cessing, Forgas proposed that mood would infuse thinking because people
would mistake their current mood as an evaluative reaction to the situation.
This is in line with Schwarz and Clore’s (1996) idea that affect serves as in-
formation about one’s surroundings.
Substantive processing occurs when people are faced with novel tasks re-
quiring them to learn new information or link prior knowledge to new in-
formation (Forgas, 2000a). The constructive nature of substantive process-
ing allows one’s current mood to infuse the thought process. That is, with
the building and constructing of new information, a person is more likely to
draw on cues from the environment including mood. Mood should also ac-
tivate information in long-term memory, making the mood-related infor-
mation more accessible in the constructive meaning making of the situation.
These effects are more pronounced when extensive processing is required by
the task or situation.
In addition to changing the content of thinking, AIM also suggests that af-
fect can influence how one thinks (use of heuristic, top-down strategies versus
attention to detail and the situation). These differences in how information is
processed are consistent with the theories of both Bless (2000) and Fiedler
(2000), which are discussed in the following section; therefore, details regard-
ing the infusion of affect into how one thinks or approaches a situation will
not be discussed in relation to the AIM model.
- AFFECT IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING 61