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Going beyond the Beauty - Trust Link: the Moderating Role of Mood

Current Psychology volume 36, pages 927–935 (2017)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 28 November 2016

This article has been updated

Abstract

The current research examines the moderating role of mood in the relationship between beauty and trust. We propose that varying mood states can evoke different trust behaviors depending on the facial attractiveness of a person. Two experiments, each with different experiment paradigms, showed that people are more likely to rely on the characteristics of their partner’s face beauty in trust building when they are experiencing a positive mood. However, when participants are primed for a negative mood, the influence of attractiveness disappears. This finding indicates that facial attractiveness has no influence on trust behavior in a negative mood condition. These findings further illuminate the underlying influence of mood in the beauty-trust link.

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Change history

  • 28 November 2016

    An erratum to this article has been published.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Sociology and Psychology, Central University of Finance and Economics, Economics 39# Xueyuan Road, Hai-Dian District, Beijing, 100101, China

    Na Zhao & Min Ma

  2. Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jianxin Zhang

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  1. Na Zhao
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  2. Min Ma
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  3. Jianxin Zhang
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Correspondence to Na Zhao.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the local ethics committee (Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Science) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of Interest

Both of the authors have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

The original version of this article was revised: The name of the second author was incorrectly listed as Mamin, when it is actually Min Ma.

An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9528-x.

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Zhao, N., Ma, M. & Zhang, J. Going beyond the Beauty - Trust Link: the Moderating Role of Mood. Curr Psychol 36, 927–935 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9481-8

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