Mood and Social Judgments: The Influence of Affect on Age-Related Differences in the Correspondence Bias

Abstract

Although age-related differences in the correspondence bias are often attributed to cognitive decline, the present study found that age-related differences in the correspondence bias were differentially influenced by the participants mood states. Young and older participants completed an attitude-attribution task after having been induced to experience a positive, neutral, or negative mood. Whereas older adults demonstrated the correspondence bias more strongly in the negative mood condition relative to the positive mood condition, young adults exhibited the exact opposite pattern of results. Interestingly, the positive mood manipulation led older adults to be no more dispositionally biased than their younger counterparts. Further, mood and age-related differences in attributional confidence were not eliminated after controlling for individual differences in cognitive functioning.