Home > News

MONDAY, Aug. 30 (HealthDayNews) -- Being in a bad mood may make you a better eyewitness, according to a University of New South Wales, Australia, study.

It found that people in a positive mood were more likely to have relatively unreliable memories and to demonstrate poorer judgment and critical thinking skills. But people in a negative mood, such as sadness, provided more reliable eyewitness accounts and showed superior judgment and communications skills.

This is the first study to assess the effect of mood on memory and thought.

"It shows that our recollection of past events are more likely to be contaminated by irrelevant information when we are in a positive mood. A positive mood is likely to trigger less careful thinking strategies," Professor Joseph Forgas said in a prepared statement.

He said the findings make evolutionary sense.

"This supports the idea that mood states are evolutionary signals about how to deal with threatening situations. That is, a negative mood state triggers more systematic, more attentive, more vigilant information processing," Forgas said.

"By contrast, good moods signal a benign, non-threatening environment where we don't need to be so vigilant," he said.

The study appears in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

More information

The University of California, San Diego has more about the role confidence plays in eyewitness memory.

(SOURCE: University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, news release, August 2004)

Copyright © 2004 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.