In Isbell, Burns, and Harr’s [6] ex

In Isbell, Burns, and Harr’s [6] experiment, they
utilized the natural mood differences and explored the
influences of positive and negative affective states on
information seeking. They conducted two experiments.
In the first experiment, they presented both global and
specific information to the participants but asked them
to choose which type they wanted to hear first and then
recall a specific information item later on. The results
show that the relatively happy people were inclined to
hear the global information first compared with the
relatively unhappy people, who were more likely to
seek the specific information first. All the participants
were able to recall the specific information item. There
was statistically significant difference for relatively
happy and unhappy participants. In the second
experiment, the participants’ mood was manipulated by
asking them to write a happy or sad personal
experience. After that, they were given a task to build
some impressions about one person by selecting and
reading some information. On the computer system,
two types of information (global and specific) were
presented. The participants could select either type
they preferred. In the end, they were asked to rate the
usefulness of different types of information. The results
turned out to be consistent with the first experiment.
Happy participants were more likely to choose global
information first than were sad participants. They
viewed a larger proportion of global items than did the
sad participants. Happy participants viewed a smaller
proportion of specific items than did the sad
participants. Mood influenced the information selection
in the negative condition but failed to in the positive
condition.