The Effect of Mood Induced Information Accessibility on Self-positivity Bias and Risk Estimation

• Main Authors: Yet-Wu, Tsai, 蔡逸武
• Other Authors: Mengkuan Lai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/84307236329311394835

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 企業管理學系 === 87 === It has been found that people tend to estimate their future optimistically. Believing that their chances of experiencing bad events are much lower than others, they would sometimes be too complacent to adopt means to reduce risk. This study analyzes the relationship among mood states, information accessibility, self-positivity bias, and risk estimation. Specifically, the primary purpose of this study is to examine if mood states can affect the retrieval of information which, in turn, influence self-positivity bias, and risk judgement. The study employed VMIP ( Velten Mood Induction Procedure) to induce subjects’ mood states as either happy or sad. Subjects in these two mood states were then asked to evaluate the likelihood of experiencing a car accident, a pre-chosen negative event, and explain how they generate their judgment. The result of this research indicates that when subjects are in happy mood, the accessibility of positive information is higher than that of negative information, hence result in higher self-positivity bias. As a result, they use singular estimation to evaluate their risk of encountering a car accident. On the other hand, when they are in sad mood, they retrieve more negative information than positive to their mind. There fore, self-positivity bias is reduced and they tend to use distributional risk estimation. However, this research is not able to find support for the significant differences of the impact of general statistical information on subjects’ perception in this study. Conclusions and future research suggestions are also discussed.