Understanding Program-Induced Mood Effects: Decoupling Arousal from Valence.

The role of mood on ad processing was examined by orthogonally manipulating valence (positive versus negative) and arousal (moderate versus high). Measures of signal detection were used to provide evidence of the level (deep versus shallow) and nature (schematic versus data-driven) of processing. Results indicate that the arousal and valence dimensions of mood differentially affect ad processing, with arousal affecting the level of processing and valence influencing the nature of processing. The processing level was more shallow when the arousal level was high rather than moderate. Positive valence was associated with the greater use of schematic processing, whereas negative valence was associated with the greater use of data-driven processing. These results were obtained even when covarying out the effect of arousal and valence at ad retrieval. Therefore, the effects are attributable to the impact of the two dimensions of mood at encoding (i.e., during ad processing) versus ad retrieval (i.e., when responding to the questionnaires). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]