6 Mood And Goal Related Performance Standards
6.2 Negative affect and personal performance standards
As indicated by Martin (2000), the mood-as-input theory suggests no relation between mood and processing style, however other literature indicates that there is a relationship between mood and processing. For example, Cervone, Kopp, Schaumann, & Scott (1994) examined how induced negative mood affected
performance standards and self-efficacy judgements. Self-efficacy may be particularly important in goal related tasks in that people high in self-efficacy have been found to choose to perform more challenging tasks and tend to persist at tasks for longer than those with low self-efficacy (Schwarzer & Scholz, 2000). This is particularly pertinent to a mood-as-input account of evaluative processing (Martin et al., 1993). Thus, mood can be seen to serve as input into evaluative strategies as to how an individual feels about a target, whether the target may be to stop when they no longer feel like continuing (“feel like” stop rule) or to persevere until they feel they have done as much as they can (“as many as can” stop rule). If self-efficacy is high, one may feel a greater sense of competency over their ability to successfully complete an open-ended task, this may result in termination of the task earlier than if one is low in feelings of self-efficacy.
Cervone et al. (1994) performed 3 experiments examining the effects of mood on standards for performance, judgements of performance capabilities, and self-efficacy judgements. In experiment 1 they examined social and academic activities, in experiment 2 novel tasks were examined including a suicide note detection task or a suicide statistics task, in experiment 3 they examined the relationship between performance standards and self-efficacy judgements. In both experiments 1 and 2 negative mood was found to induce higher personal standards for performance, but had no effect on perceived self-efficacy. Cervone et al. suggest that if negative mood increases personal performance standards this can create negative discrepancies between performance standards adopted and the level of performance judged to be achievable. As such this indicates that negative mood may induce self-defeating cognitive patterns (Cervone et al.). If this is the case, one could argue that creating high minimal performance standards could lead to the natural adoption of “as many as can” stop rule use, motivated by an attempt to meet the increased adopted personal standard.
Scott & Cervone (2002) further examined the link between negative affect and performance standards. Results supported previous work (e.g. Cervone et al., 1994) whereby negative affect induced higher standards for performance as measured by items assessing minimal performance standards for academic and social situations. They also examined self-efficacy appraisals by asking
participants to rate the level of performances they judged themselves capable of achieving, again in academic and social situations. Scott and Cervone suggest that prior performance, self-efficacy for the goal activity, performance levels related to significant others, and negative affect, all relate to goal stringency.
However Scott and Cervone (2002) further suggest that negative affect only provides a context for regulation in relation to task perseverance when the source of the mood is not salient. This has implications for mood-as-input theory, suggesting that people only use their moods as information when there is no obvious explanation for their mood state. Thus if the source of the mood is salient, i.e. participants are aware that they have undergone a mood induction procedure, negative affect may not have implications for performance standards. Results confirmed these predictions in that negative affect generated higher minimal performance standards, apart from when the mood induction procedure was made highly salient (Scott & Cervone). However, as predicted by previous research (Cervone et al., 1994) negative affect had no impact on perceived self-efficacy.
Research described above (e.g. Cervone et al., 1994; Scott & Cervone, 2002) found no links between negative affect and self-efficacy, but literature does suggest a link between low self-efficacy and depression. For example, Bandura, Pastorelli, Barbaranelli, & Caprara (1999) found that perceived social and academic inefficacy contributed to both concurrent and subsequent depression in children. Furthermore, perceived inefficacy has also been associated with anxiety arousal when one feels a lack of perceived self-efficacy in coping with the demands of the environment (Bandura, 1988). It is thus possible that there is a relationship between mood and perceived self-efficacy, although possibly a more complex interaction with environmental cues, self-efficacy, and mood, rather than a causal relationship between increased negative affect and decreased perceived self-efficacy.
Gendolla & Krüsken (2002) examine the idea that emotions have a motivational function, which can be perceived in the activity of the autonomic nervous system. The authors suggest that moods influence appraisal in a mood congruent manner. Thus people in a positive mood are more convinced that they can cope with the demands of a task, but those in a negative mood feel less able to
cope. Gendolla & Krüsken examine how mood provides information to impact on the mobilization of effort when demands of a task are considered easy or hard. In a similar vein to the mood-as-input model (e.g. Martin et al., 1993; Martin & Davies, 1998), Gendolla & Krüsken suggest that it is not moods per se that influence effort mobilisation, rather that moods influence autonomic activity with their informational impact depending on the context in which they are experienced. Thus performance standards for a task depended on the mood the participant was in and whether the task was perceived as easy or difficult. The authors measured systolic blood pressure (SBP) responses as a reflection of effort in relation to the task. They found that when in a negative mood and the task was easy SPB responses were stronger, thus reflecting more effort on the task, yet when the task was more difficult SPB responses were stronger when in a positive mood. This can be taken as evidence that mood has an informational effect on behaviour depending upon the perceived demands of the task. It is possible that mood and implicit task demands brought to a task by an individual may also influence task performance depending on the valency of the mood. As such, this type of research can be related to psychopathology in that it supports a link between emotional responding and physiological responding.
Research discussed above suggests a link between negative affect and minimal performance standards (Cervone et al., 1994; Scott & Cervone, 2002), which may have implications for goal stringency in relation to task performance (Scott & Cervone). Feelings of inefficacy at tasks have also been related to anxiety (e.g. Bandura, 1988) and depression (e.g. Bandura et al., 1999). Furthermore Gendolla & Krüsken (2002) found that self-regulation at a task as determined by systolic blood pressure was dependent on the participants’ concurrent mood and the perceived ease of the task. However, putting aside the issue of how specific moods and goal stringency (e.g. stop rule use) may interact to affect performance, the question remains as to whether specific negative moods would have similar or differential effects on personal performance standards.