← all facts
emotion
Your mood at this moment dictates your life evaluation.
The mood-as-information hypothesis suggests that you use your current affective state as a heuristic to judge your life satisfaction.
A 1983 study found that people reported higher life satisfaction on sunny days, but this effect disappeared when they were reminded of the weather. You use your feelings as an indicator of how well things are going, regardless of objective reality.
Your current mood is often mistaken for a general life assessment.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Schwarz & Clore, 1983
- What the check found
- The reference text describes the experimental procedure and findings of the Schwarz and Clore study perfectly, even though it omits the authors' names.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.