This study examined the effect of mood on spontaneous and online impression formation when personal information was encountered. In an experiment (N=72), a time constraint was imposed in judging to assure that participants were forming spontaneous impression in encoding. The results showed a greater mood effect was found under limited time conditions as compared to non-limited time conditions, when the inputted individual information was highly related to the trait to be evaluated. On the other hand, the impression was not affected by mood regardless of time constraints, when the inputted individual information was less related to the trait to be evaluated. The implications of the results, when the inputted information was directly useful, were that the initial spontaneous impression affected by mood was utilized to form final judgments. However, the implication of the results, when the inputted information was of little use, it was difficult for participants to utilize the initial spontaneous impressions in forming final judgments, even if the initial impression was affected by mood. Therefore participants rated the stimulus person neutrally because they could not clearly does.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the shape of the mouth on spatial attention evoked by gaze. Mouth shapes used were a straight mouth, a round mouth, an upper semicircular mouth, and a lower semicircular mouth, which correspond to a neutral expression, a surprise expression, an unpleasant expression, and a pleasant expression, respectively. No cuing effects were found in 600 ms and 1000 ms SOA conditions. In shorter SOA conditions (50 ms to 300 ms), facial expressions revealed significantly different time courses of the cuing effect. A significant response time (RT) gain appeared later and disappeared earlier in the pleasant face condition than in the neutral face condition. In the surprise face condition, the RT gain was lost earlier than in the neutral face condition. An unpleasant face condition showed a rather similar change in RT gain to the neutral face condition. SOA conditions in terms of maximal gains were discussed.

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This research compared the effects of messages with and without emoticons from a familiar friend on the reduction of intensity of emotions, the relationship between changes in emotions, and the impact of emoticons on text messages. In particular, the effect of messages with one of five emoticons { (^_^) (;_;) (>_<) (^_^;) m(_ _)m } and messages with no emoticons, on four emotional scripts, happy, sad, angry, and anxious, were compared. Using their own cell phones, university students (n=33) participated in this study by reporting emotional intensity when they were in each script. They again reported emotional intensity after receiving a text message with emoticons from a familiar friend. Results indicated that (1) messages with emoticons reduced the intensity of the receiver's negative emotions in comparison to messages without emoticons; and (2) when receivers were feeling angry or happy, a significant relationship was found between the impact of emoticons and the reduction in the intensity of emotions, expect when receivers were feeling anxious or sad. Results suggest that appropriate selection from emoticons reduces the intensity of the receiver's negative emotions.

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This study investigated attention bias for emotional words (positive and negative) and neutral words among 192 undergraduate participants. Participants were given a central and incidental learning task consisting of 96 pairs of words, and were tasked to study. One word from each pair with focused attention (central learning) and the other word with divided attention (incidental learning). Half of the pairs were presented at certain time intervals (random condition) and the other half were presented continuously (massed condition). Each pair repeated three times. After the task, participants were given a free recall test. The results showed that in the incidental learning condition, the word order recall was negative, positive, and neutral in the random condition. But negative words were recalled more than positive and neutral words in the massed condition. Results suggest that the novelty of positive words is reduced in the massed condition.

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