On laboratory tasks, people experiencing positive emotions are also more optimistic about the outcomes (Brown, 1984; Wright & Mischel, 1982). It is interesting that such positive evaluations are not merely unjustified impressions; people in a happy mood often perform better than those in a sad mood (Hom & Arbuckle, 1988; see below for contradictory findings regarding performance on complex mental tasks). In one study, for example, participants experiencing positive affect completed a coding task with greater efficiency than those experiencing neutral affect (Baron, 1990).