The impact of negative affect on responses to affect-regulatory experiences

People who feel unhappy are usually motivated to eliminate this unpleasant affective state. However, the objective they pursue could be either general (e.g., to feel better) or specific (to remedy the conditions that gave rise to their negative feelings). Three studies examined the factors that determined the level of specificity at which individuals define their affect-regulatory objective and their attraction to activities that bear on this objective. Participants were attracted to activities that could potentially eliminate the specific concerns that elicited their negative affect only if (a) the description of these activities called attention to these concerns or (b) they were explicitly told to think about the situation that gave rise to their unpleasant feelings. More generally, participants were attracted to activities that were intrinsically attractive but irrelevant to the situation that produced the negative affect they were experiencing.