Emotional influences on predictive accuracy

  • Predicting each others’ preferences is a common task, in particular among friends and romantic partners. The goal of this project is to find out in how far this ability depends on current emotional states. Do couples who are in a similar mood (e.g. both happy or both sad) make more accurate predictions? Is there a main effect of mood such that putting people in a sad mood makes them empathic? To find out, the plan is to conduct a lab experiment where friends and couples predict each other’s likes and dislikes and where their current mood is experimentally manipulated.