Impact of mood, framing, and need for cognition on decision makers' recall and confidence

This study examined the impact of mood, information framing, and need for cognition on participants' amount of recall and level of confidence in a simulated business-decision-making setting. No main effect was obtained for either positive or negative mood. However, in support of the congruity-incongruity hypothesis, participants who received mood-congruent framing information (positive mood/positive framing and negative mood/negative framing) showed significantly better recall and were significantly less overconfident than those who received mood-incongruent framing information (positive mood/negative framing and negative mood/positive framing). Yet, congruity-incongruity effects were moderated by decision makers' need for cognition and were obtained only among participants' with a lower cognitive processing requirement. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.