week 9

Vosburg (1, 6, 12) pg. 253 1. The results of several studies are presented as evidence for a facilitatory effect of positive mood on creative problem-solving. Briefly describe this evidence. 

The empirical literature on mood and creative problem-solving emphasizes the facilitating effect of positive mood. Most of these studies employed three types of tasks: insert problems, categorization tasks, and remote associates. For example, Isen, Daubman, and Nowicki (1987) found that positive mood had a facilitative effect on creative problem-solving by facilitating the process of finding relatedness and diverse stimuli. Greene and Noice (1988) replicated the results for the insight task in the study with adolescents as participants. In a categorization task, adolescence in the positive condition generated more words and a greater number of atypical words with respect to a given category than did adolescence in other experimental conditions.  

6. Describe what you would have been asked to do, had you been a participant in the experiment.
I would be asked to do divergent-thinking tasks in a group as part of a larger experiment. I’d be given many tasks and questionnaires presented as a way to conceal the purpose of the experiment. I would be asked to complete the Russell Adjective Check List, but be instructed to wait to begin the problem-solving tasks together as a group. I would be given only five minutes on each problem-solving task. Each task would be given at the same time. Once it was completed, it would never be return to. After completion of all the questionnaires, I would be thanked for my efforts and given an extra lecture on a topic of interest as a reward for my participation. 

12. The authors cite two separate problems with the assessment of negative moods, one methodological and one conceptual. Describe each of these problems. 

Two sets of problems arise when measuring negative mood.   One is methodological in that participants did not seem to check many negative terms on this particular adjective checklist perhaps because only a few students maybe in a bad mood and if they are the checklist used maybe too measure mild variations of negative because they allow only checking in particular items if no items are checked, no information about a particular real estate is available, leading many per distance without measurements. The second problem with measuring negative mood is a negative mood getting that manifested into ways: One is sad or one is discontent/dissatisfied.  While positive mood is relatively straightforward and unidimensional, negative mood may be multidimensional and more complex.  So positive mood and negative mood cannot be compared equally as opposites.