POSITIVE MOOD AND SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Positive mood predicts a broad range of psychological correlates of well-being in children. The present study examined the effects of positive mood on 3 components of social information processing (SIP) in young children including cue encoding, cue interpretation, and response access. The study hypothesized that positive mood and positive emotionality would have main effects on global orientation, response access, and socially competent responding and would also have an interactive effect on these variables. It was also hypothesized that anger would increase anger attribution bias. A computer game, during which participants won or unfairly lost toys, was used to induce happiness and anger in 104 participants recruited from Head Start Centers in urban communities. Participants also were exposed to a neutral stimulus during which they viewed pictures of everyday household and classroom objects. Friedman tests were used to examine the main and interactive effects of positive mood and positive emotionality on cue encoding and response access and the main effect of anger on cue interpretation. Spearman correlations were used to examine the relation between positive emotionality and SIP variables. Results indicated that positive mood has a positive main effect on global orientation and interacts with positive emotionality to predict global orientation such that the effect of positive mood is stronger and more positive for children higher in positive emotionality. Implications for these findings are discussed