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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 8, 1134-1144 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167204274081
© 2005 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Happiness as a Belief System: Individual Differences and Priming in Emotion Judgments

Michael D. Robinson

North Dakota State University, Michael.D.Robinson{at}ndsu.nodak.edu

Ben S. Kirkeby

North Dakota State University

Three studies involving 104 undergraduates sought to examine how an individual’s level of life satisfaction organizes their knowledge concerning the self’s emotions. Participants judged the self’s positive and negative emotions within a computerized task. Key results sought to determine whether judging two positive emotions in a consecutive sequence speeds the second judgment—a pattern of priming that would suggest a tighter, more interconnected structure in semantic memory related to one’s positive emotions. As expected, individual differences in life satisfaction predicted the magnitude of this priming effect (Studies 1 & 2), which appeared to be unique to judgments of the self’s emotions (Study 3). The results indicate that happy, relative to less happy, individuals organize information concerning their positive emotions in a qualitatively different and tighter semantic manner.

Key Words: life satisfaction • emotion • happiness • affect • judgment processes • priming


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