Far more of the people in a foul mood chose the long-shot lottery choice than those in either the neutral or good mood, the researchers found. They repeated the experiment and found that if they made people think about the pros and cons of their choice, far fewer people took the long-shot, regardless of their mood. People in a bad mood seem to act compulsively, said Bau-meister. They re looking for a way to alleviate their pain and take the first choice that comes along without thinking through the odds. There s no evidence that people have a desire to suffer, but they do inadvertently bring suffering onto themselves.
People have psychic energy that vigorous mental activity can deplete.
Such depletion weakens our ego and our defenses against threats to self-esteem. For example, Baumeister and his colleagues found that if people had to resist the temptation to eat chocolate, they were less persistent on an unsolvable puzzle task than a control group that was allowed to eat chocolate. In another study, Kristin Sommer, PhD, who presented at the symposium, tested whether people with depleted energy reserves would have a harder time warding off threats to their self-esteem than other people. The researchers then told half the participants that they scored in the normal range on a creativity test and half that they scored in the deficient range. Strong support .