The Impact of Induced Positive Affect on Incarcerated Males' Learning.

This study examined the impact of self-induced positive and neutral affect and a priori depression on the learning of 62 incarcerated, adolescent males. Sixty-two males with high and low Children's Depression Inventory (CD!) depression scores were randomly assigned to a positive or neutral affect induction condition. Following affect induction, the subjects participated in a series of 5 tasks in which they learned to read Hindi words. The results showed a main effect for self-induced ps Isen, 1987). Thus, it is surprising that the scientific study of the influence of af fect on learning and behavior is a fairly recent development. Recent interest represents a ma jor shift in the focus of psychological inquiries which has operated on the implicit assumption that affect and cognition could be adequately studied separately. The myth of affectless be havior and cognition has been challenged in the past 10 years. Zajonc (1980) argued that affective reactions often are primary to, and may temporarily precede, elaborate cognitive pro cessing. Others have argued that emotional states and reactions are components of a sin gle, integrated cognitive representation system (Bower, 1981). Evidence has accumulated in social psy chology suggesting that in many everyday so cial contexts, affect and cognition may be re garded as partially independent response systems (Forgas, 1991). Affective states in this regard are viewed as serving direct information al functions (Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Although there are vigorous debates taking place regard ing whether affect and cognition are separate or interdependent systems, there is no question that the mechanisms that mediate between feel ing states and the cognitive processes involved 204 / May 1995 in cognition, learning, and social behavior are of critical importance in both our personal and our working lives (Forgas, 1991). Recently there has been intense interest in research examining the relationships between affect and learning. Affect has been defined as milder and less intense than emotions, as per vasive, general, and unfocused states that do not interfere with ongoing thoughts and behav ior (e. g., feeling good or feeling bad). Affective states "gently color and redirect ongoing thoughts and actions, influencing what will happen next but almost without notice and cer tainly without ostensibly changing the context or basic activity" (Isen, 1984, pp. 186-187). Two broad dimensions of affect are positive and neg ative (Watson & Teilegen, 1985). An example of positive affect is how a person may feel when he or she gets a free coupon to McDonald's. Negative affect is how a person may feel when he or she finds that the McDonald's coupon has expired. A variety of methods have been used to manipulate affect in laboratory and field set tings to study its impact on learning and behav ior, including reading positive or negative self referent statements (Velten, 1968), distributing cookies or small prizes (Isen, 1987), using hyp notism (Bower, Monteiro, & Gilligan, 1978), and spraying a room with air freshener (Baron, 1990). A self-generated visualization process Behavioral Disorders, 20(3), 204-211 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.136 on Thu, 19 May 2016 04:17:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms has been used extensively with children. Using this technique, children are asked to visualize for 30 seconds to 2 minutes an event that makes them feel happy or sad. Results of research con ducted with children consistently have report ed an advantage for positive (versus negative) affect induction. For example, Masters, Barden, and Ford (1979) found 4-year-old children in a happy affect condition performed a discrimi nation task faster, reached mastery with fewer trials, and were more involved in the task than children induced into sad and neutral affects. Across studies, children's learning of discrimi nation tasks (Masters et al., 1979), children's recognition memory (Forgas, Burnham, & Trim boli, 1988), recall of story content (Potts, Mor se, Felleman, & Masters, 1986), and speed of learning and performance accuracy (Masters et al., 1979) have been affected by induced posi tive affect compared to induced negative and neutral affect. In contrast, negative affect has been related to significantly slower learning rates, less accuracy, and slower performance speed (Masters et al., 1979). Negative affect appears to interfere with cognitive processing, making it less efficient (Leight & Ellis, 1981). A number of studies have employed a self generated visualization technique with students with learning disabilities (LD). Students in the positive condition were asked to close their eyes for 45 seconds and to think about something that made them very happy. In the neutral con dition students were asked to close their eyes and count from 1 to 50. Students in these stud ies included primary, elementary, and high school students with LD in mainstreamed and self-contained classrooms. The tasks included learning vocabulary words (Bryan & Bryan, 1991a), a short-term memory task (digit span; Yasutake & Bryan, 1995), addition and subtrac tion problems (Bryan & Bryan, 1991b), the WISC-R coding subtest, and the Woodcock Johnson Math Computation test (Yasutake & Bryan, in press). In all but one study, students in the positive condition performed better than students in the neutral condition (Ya sutake & Bryan, in press). Students in the positive affect condition learned more vocab ulary words, completed more math problems accurately, and performed better on digit span and coding tasks than students in the neutral condition. Although students with LD have been found to experience more negative emotions and af fect than nondisabled students (Duane, 1993; Maag & Behrens, 1989), research on students Behavioral Disorders, 20(3), 204-211 with LD suggests that induced positive affect has a highly consistent and significant positive impact on their learning and performance. How ever, this research has not examined the rela tionship between a priori negative affect and learning under positive affect induction. Given that negative affect may result in less efficient and poorer learning (Leight & Ellis, 1981 ; Mas ters et al., 1979), it seems important that edu cational programs for students who manifest de pression take into account the direct influence negative moods have on learning. Stroessner and Mackie (1992) have suggested that intense negative moods, such as severe depression, may focus attention on one's internal mood state and disrupt the likelihood that positive affect induc tion will lead to more efficient information pro cessing. It seems reasonable to assume that ex isting affective states would impact upon the efficacy of induced affect, but evidence is lack ing that this is so. Studies of induced positive affect with students with learning disabilities have yielded promising results. But, the influ ence of a priori affective states (e.g., depression) on learning and performance was not exam ined. An important question is whether stu dents who experience negative emotions or manifest negative emotional reactions ben efit from positive affect induction. To exam ine this issue, we extend this line of research to include students who demonstrate severe emotional problems, behavioral problems, and delinquency. The study reported here employed a sam ple of incarcerated male juveniles. Several re search studies have specifically linked depres sive symptoms and delinquency (Maag, Behrens, & DiGangi, 1992; Rosenberg, School er, & Schoenbach, 1989; Windle, 1992). Beck er, Kaplan, Tenke, and Tartaglini (1991) found 43% of male juvenile sex offenders exhibited appreciable depressive symptoms. Gold, Matt lin, and Osgood (1989) found two-thirds of a sample of delinquent boys showed sufficiently stable anxiety and depression over time to war rant psychiatric classification. Coolidge, Reil man, Becker, and Cass (1992) found 11 to 17 year-old juvenile nonviolent offenders more depressed than a control group. Herrman, McGorry, Mills, and Singh (1991) assessed the prevalence of severe mental disorders in 15to 34-year-old sentenced prisoners. A lifetime diagnosis of at least one mental disorder was made for 82% of the subjects, pointing to a large pool of prisoners with largely untreat ed major depression.