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Affect in Legal and Forensic Settings: The Cognitive Benefits of Not Being Too Happy

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Emotion and the Law

Part of the book series: Nebraska Symposium on Motivation ((NSM,volume 56))

Abstract

Imagine the following scenario. It is a cold, rainy day, and as you enter the local news agency to buy a paper, you briefly notice a number of strange items on the checkout counter – a matchbox car, some plastic toy animals, and a few other trinkets, objects that really do not belong in a shop environment. As you leave the store, a young woman approaches you, introduces herself as a psychologist conducting research on memory, and asks you to try to remember as many of the strange objects you have briefly seen in the shop as you can. The question she is interested in is this: Can your slightly negative mood induced by the unpleasant weather improve the accuracy of your eyewitness memory for the objects you saw? More generally, are we better at remembering everyday details when we are in a bad mood, or do people remember more on a bright, sunny day, when they are in a good mood?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of New south Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Joseph P. Forgas

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  1. Joseph P. Forgas
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Correspondence to Joseph P. Forgas .

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  1. Dept. Psychology, University of Nebraska, Burnett Hall 335, Lincoln, 68588-0308, Nebraska, USA

    Brian H. Bornstein

  2. , Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska/Lincoln, Burnett Hall 338, Lincoln, 68588-9296, Nebraska, USA

    Richard L. Wiener

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Forgas, J.P. (2009). Affect in Legal and Forensic Settings: The Cognitive Benefits of Not Being Too Happy. In: Bornstein, B., Wiener, R. (eds) Emotion and the Law. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol 56. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0696-0_2

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