Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239243

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / j e s p

Reports

Can happy mood reduce the just world bias? Affective inuences on blaming the victim
Liz Goldenberg , Joseph P. Forgas
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Do temporary moods inuence people's tendency to blame victims for undeserved negative events? Based on research on the just world effect and recent affect theories, this experiment predicted and found that positive mood decreased and negative mood increased people's motivation to blame innocent victims for their misadventures. Participants (N = 70) were induced into positive or negative mood by viewing lms, and subsequently read a newspaper article describing a random assault on either a fellow student (in-group member) or a corporate employee (out-group member). Their reactions were assessed on three measures: attributions of responsibility, dissociation from the victim and character evaluations. Positive mood reduced and negative mood increased the tendency to blame the victim, and in-group victims were blamed more than out-group victims. These results are discussed in terms of recent theories of affect and motivation, and their implications for real-life social judgments are considered. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 22 December 2010 Revised 23 May 2011 Available online 23 July 2011 Keywords: Social judgment Mood Attribution Just world bias

Introduction Is the world a just place? Although we all would prefer to think so, our belief in a just and predictable world is often challenged by news that innocent people may suffer terrible misfortunes. According to the fascinating literature on the just world effect, people often cope with such threatening information by, paradoxically, blaming innocent victims for their misadventures (Lerner & Simmons, 1966; Lerner, 1980). Although affect is likely to play an important role in motivated cognition in general (Trope, Igou, & Burke, 2006) and the just world bias in particular (Lerner, Goldberg, & Tetlock, 1998; Thornton, 1984), there has been no prior research on how pre-existing positive or negative moods may inuence the motivation to blame victims. This experiment sought to demonstrate that positive mood may reduce, and negative mood increase the tendency to blame victims for their misfortunes.

The just world effect Although the term victim implies an innocent person suffering an adverse outcome, the idea that misfortunes are causally linked to a person's past transgressions has long been dominant in intuitive reasoning and in religious and moral theorising. Lerner (1980) proposed the rst psychological explanation for the seemingly irrational blaming the victim effect, suggesting that humans possess a basic need to believe that the world is a just place and people get the
Corresponding author. E-mail address: jp.forgas@unsw.edu.au (L. Goldenberg). 0022-1031/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.07.007

outcomes they deserve. Evidence that challenges the just world view such as innocent persons being victimized constitute a profound psychological threat to this belief (Hafer, 2000). Motivated defensive strategies, such as blaming the victim, may help to restore a sense of justice and predictability to one's world view. By blaming a victim a person can also bolster the cherished belief in individual mastery, reassuring themselves that it is within their power to avoid similar misfortunes by acting differently (Dalbert, 2001). Several motivated justice-preservation strategies have been identied in the literature, such as attributing responsibility internally (to the victim), dissociating from the victim, and forming negative character evaluations (for a review, see Hafer & Begue, 2005). We shall look at all three measures here, and for our purposes, the term blame will be used to refer to all three of these justice-preservation strategies. Belief in a just world is also positively related to psychological adjustment and the ability to cope with one's misfortunes (Dalbert, 1999, 2001, 2002). People often experience negative affect when events challenge their belief in a just world (Lerner & Goldberg, 1999), and blaming the victim is likely to be partly motivated by the need to alleviate the aversive affective state produced by encounters with injustice (Lerner & Goldberg, 1999; Thornton, 1984). It seems highly likely then that pre-existing affective states may also inuence just world attributions, yet this effect has not been examined previously. Instead of focusing on the affective consequences of exposure to such events, this experiment will explore how antecedent positive and negative moods may inuence the tendency to blame victims for their misfortunes. Thus, this study extends the recent literature on mood effects on judgments to a new domain, just world attributions. For the purposes of this research, we may dene moods as low-intensity, diffuse, and

240

L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239243

relatively enduring affective states without a salient antecedent cause and little cognitive content (Forgas, 1992, p.230). We focus on moods rather than emotions here, as mood states are more likely to be subconscious, enduring and have more reliable and enduring judgmental consequences (Forgas, 2002) than do context-specic emotions (Forgas, 2006). Past research on the blaming the victim effect also found that defensive attributions are more likely when the victim is an in-group member rather than an out-group member (Aguiar, Vala, Correia, & Pereira, 2008; Correia, Vala, & Aguiar, 2007), as the misfortunes of ingroup victims present a greater threat to one's just world beliefs (Correia & Vala, 2003). As the victim becomes more similar to the observer, the threat to the belief in personal mastery and a just world increases. In the present study victim group membership was also manipulated by describing the victim as either an in-group member (fellow student) or as an out-group member (corporate employee). Extrapolating from previous ndings, we expected that in-group victims should be blamed more than strangers. Mood effects on blaming the victim Mood states have signicant cognitive as well as motivational consequences for social judgments and behaviors (Forgas, 2006). Recent research shows that moods can inuence the valence of the information people rely on (congruence effects; Bower & Forgas, 2001; Forgas, 1995, 2002), how they process information (processing effects; Bless & Fiedler, 2006), as well as inuencing people's motivational resources to cope with threatening information (mood as a resource effects; Ragunathan & Trope, 2002). While most prior studies focused on the cognitive consequences of moods (Forgas, 1998), motivational effects received far less attention. There is some evidence that negative affect is one of the consequences of exposure to information that challenges just world beliefs (Lerner et al., 1998; Thornton, 1984). Blaming the victim may thus be partly motivated by the need to alleviate an aversive affective state and restore justice (Thornton, 1984). There is some evidence that mood states can motivate quite elaborate ego-defensive strategies, such as selfhandicapping (Alter & Forgas, 2007). It is rather surprising then that there has been no prior research investigating how antecedent mood states may inuence the blaming the victim effect. There are three main theories that suggest that moods may exert an important motivational as well as a cognitive inuence on how just world attributions are formed (Forgas, 2006). (1) Motivational accounts such as the mood as resource theory suggest that positive mood may function as a motivational resource enabling individuals to deal with potentially threatening information (Raghunathan & Trope, 2002; Trope & Neter, 1994). This model is likely to apply to just world judgments as positive mood may act as a resource and thus reduce the need to engage in defensive blame strategies. Conversely, negative mood may increase the motivation to rely on justice-preservation strategies. Thus, as exposure to injustice produces negative affect, positive mood should reduce, and negative mood should increase the motivation for people to engage in victim blame, in an attempt to alleviate aversive affect (Dalbert, 2001; Hafer, 2000). Moods also have cognitive consequences, for example, by inuencing (2) information processing styles (Bless & Fiedler, 2006). Happy persons tend to focus more on pre-existing, internal information, processing assimilatively, while sad persons pay more attention to new, outside information, processing accommodatively (Forgas, 2011; Forgas, Goldenberg, & Unkelbach, 2009; Tan & Forgas, 2010). This theory also suggests that greater attention directed at external aversive events in a negative mood may also increase the tendency to engage in defensive attributions, while positive mood should reduce this effect. Finally, (3) mood congruence occurs (Forgas, 2002, 2006) when moods selectively prime mood-congruent information in memory, and people recall and use more affectively congruent

information in their judgments (Bower, 1981; Forgas, 2002, 2006; Forgas & Bower, 1987). Thus, as a result of mood congruence, positive mood should reduce people's tendency to selectively encode and remember the details of aversive events, decreasing the need to engage in defensive attributions. All three affect theories considered here lead to a convergent prediction that positive affect should reduce, and negative affect should increase people's tendency to engage in defensive justice-preservation strategies by blaming the victim. However, as the blaming the victim effect is largely a motivated bias intended to reduce discomfort and restore the belief in a just world, the motivated mood as resource theory seems the most likely to apply here. In an attempt to obtain selective evidence about these alternative theories, and clarify the mechanisms responsible for the predicted effects, memory data (relevant to evaluating the mood congruence account) and processing latency data (relevant to evaluating the information processing account) will also be collected here. Further, we also expected that in-group victims should be blamed more than out-group victims. Method Overview, participants, and design 70 students (51 females and 19 males) participated in the experiment for course credit. The session was introduced as comprising two unrelated studies, (a) a lm evaluation study (in fact, the mood induction) and (b) a study of social judgments (in fact, the just world study). First, participants watched either the positive or negative mood induction video. Next, they read a newspaper article describing a physical attack on either a fellow university student (in-group condition) or a corporate employee (out-group condition), and then provided judgments on three measures: attribution of responsibility, dissociation from the victim, and, character evaluations. Participants then completed questionnaires designed to assess CUED recall and recognition memory for the content of the newspaper article. The procedure concluded with a debrieng when the effectiveness of the mood induction was also assessed. The study comprised a 2 (mood: positive or negative) 2 (group membership: in-group or out-group) betweensubjects design. The mood induction Participants watched 10-minute edited lms in order to select lms for a later study. In the positive condition they saw segments from a comedy (Fawlty Towers), and in the negative condition they saw excerpts from a sad lm (Angela's Ashes). In addition, the induced mood state was further reinforced by playing mood-consistent background music during the experiment (Eich & Macaulay, 2000). This was explained to participants by the experimenter as she will be listening to music while completing other work. The social judgment task Next, as part of the second, social judgments study participants were asked to read a newspaper article on the computer screen reporting a recent random physical attack in a deserted lane where the victim was assaulted and severely injured by two strangers on his way home one night. The article was accompanied by an emotionally evocative picture of the bloodied victim in a hospital bed. The victim was described either as a current student at the university (in-group condition) or a corporate employee working in a bank (out-group condition). Immediately after reading the article participants answered a series of eight questions presented in a random order on the computer screen on a 18 scale. The questions measured three aspects of victim blame: two questions assessed responsibility attribution (to what

L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239243

241

extent could the victim have prevented what happened, how responsible was the victim for what happened). Two questions assessed dissociation from the victim (would you behave the same way in the same circumstances, how likely is IT that such events could occur to a personal friend). The nal four scales assessed impressions of the victim on bipolar scales measuring competence, respectability, likeability and self-condence. Memory tasks and processing latencies Memory for the information presented in the newspaper article was also assessed using a cued recall memory task, followed later by a recognition task containing 8 original statements and 8 distracter statements. The time taken to read the newspaper article and reaction times for the 8 judgments concerning the victim were recorded by the computer program used to administer the task. Manipulation checks and debrieng A careful debrieng concluded the procedure. Participants rst completed a lm evaluation questionnaire (in fact, the mood validation) asking them how they felt immediately after watching the lms on four nine-point bipolar scales (happy-sad; calm-aroused; goodbad; relaxed-tense). Participants were also asked to write down the occupation of the victim to check the effectiveness of the in-group/outgroup manipulation. Great care was taken to remove any residual mood effects. Results Validation of the manipulations Three participants were excluded from the analysis as they indicated suspicion about the manipulations, and three further participants were excluded as their English competence was inadequate, leaving 64 participants in the analysis. The four mood self-rating scales were subjected to a principal components analysis, resulting in two components: mood valence (happy-sad; good-bad; relaxed-tense, VAF = 67.1%), and arousal (calm-aroused, VAF = 22.9%). Ratings on the three valence scales were combined into a single affective valence measure (Cronbach's = .92). A t-test on the valence measure conrmed that participants in the positive mood condition rated themselves as signicantly happier (M = 1.81, SD = 1.43) than did those in the negative mood condition (M = 2.63, SD = 1.1; t(62) = 13.89, p b .001), conrming that the mood induction was highly effective. The mood induction did not inuence self-reported arousal levels (M = 0.16, SD = 2.44 vs. M = 0.75, SD = 2.02; t(62) = 1.62, p N .05). The group membership manipulation was also successful, as all participants correctly identied the victim's occupation. Blaming the victim The eight scales measuring blame for the victim were subjected to a principal components analysis (Furnham, 2003; Maes, 1998), and three components were identied. The rst component was labelled general evaluation, marked by four scales (respectability; competence; likeability; and condence; VAF = 34.22%) that were combined into a single measure (Cronbach's = .79). This component captures a key theoretical construct identied in the literature on blaming the victim (Gruman & Sloan, 1983; Murray & Stahly, 1987). The second component labelled responsibility attribution consisted of two items (responsibility; capacity to prevent incident, VAF = 23.31%; Cronbach's = .68). Finally, the third component, dissociation from the victim, consisted of two items (would behave differently; wouldn't happen to a friend; VAF = 11.87%; Cronbach's = .62).

Attribution of responsibility The effects of mood and victim group membership on attributions were examined in a 2 (mood: positive, negative) 2 (victim group membership: in-group, out-group) ANOVA. Group membership had a signicant main effect: the victim was judged as more responsible for the incident when described as a fellow student rather than a corporate employee (M = 5.31, SD = 1.67 vs. M = 4.2, SD = 1.74; F(1,62) = 7.17, p b .01). This result conrms that an attack on an in-group victim was more threatening and more likely to result in victim blame compared to an out-group victim, consistent with a stronger just world effect. We also found a signicant mood main effect in the predicted direction (Fig. 1). Participants in the positive mood condition blamed the victim signicantly less (M = 4.28, SD = 1.71) than did those in the negative mood condition (M = 5.23, SD = 1.74), F(1,62) = 5.29, p b .025. Dissociation from the victim measure The 2 2 ANOVA of the dissociation measure also revealed a signicant main effect due to in-group vs. out-group status. Participants dissociated themselves more from the in-group victim ( M = 5.09, SD = 2.03) than the out-group victim ( M = 4.03, SD = 1.48), F(1,62) = 6.11, p b .016. Mood also had a main effect on the dissociation measure. Participants in the positive mood condition dissociated themselves less from the victim (M = 4.13, SD = 1.69) than did those in the negative mood condition (M = 5.0, SD = 1.9), F(1,62) = 4.14, p b .05, once again conrming that positive mood reduced, and negative mood increased the tendency to display the just world bias by blaming the victim. Evaluation of the victim We found no main effects due to group membership, F(1,62) = 1.33, p N .05, or due to mood, F(1,62) = 2.9, p N .05, on the overall evaluation of the victim. This result indicates the absence of a basic mood-congruent effect on these judgments, suggesting that mood effects on attributions and dissociation were more likely to be due to motivational effects rather than a simple mood-congruent bias, an issue that was explored further in additional analyses. Additional analyses and alternative explanations Further analyses were conducted to clarify the mechanisms responsible for these effects and to eliminate alternative explanations. Although the mood-as-a-resource model provides the most conceptually plausible account, it is possible that people in a positive mood blamed the victim less because either they (a) processed external

Fig. 1. Mood effects on blaming the victim: positive mood decreased, and negative mood increased the tendency to attribute responsibility to the victim as well as dissociate from the victim (average judgment for in-group and out-group targets).

242

L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239243

information about the incident less carefully (the informationprocessing explanation), or (b) their positive mood selectively primed a more optimistic, benign interpretation of the event (the moodcongruence explanation). These possibilities were explored by analysing mood effects on the processing latency and memory data. Processing latencies An ANOVA found no signicant differences in time taken to read the story in the positive (M = 47.91 s, SD = 13.97 s) and negative (M = 48.28 s, SD = 14.53 s) mood conditions, F(1,62) = 0.01, p N .05. Similarly, no signicant differences were found between the positive (M = 68.91 s, SD = 27.19) and negative (M = 59.72, SD = 15.87) mood conditions in the time taken to complete the judgments, F(1,62) = 2.73, p N .05. Thus, neither the reading latency nor the judgmental latency data support the hypothesis that mood-induced differences in processing style could have been responsible for the observed effects. Memory measures An ANOVA investigated mood congruent effects on memory by analysing differences in the number of details recalled by happy and sad participants, as coded by two raters (Cronbach's = .89). Only negative details were analysed as the target story contained no positive information. Results showed no signicant mood congruence in memory between the positive (M = 14.7, SD = 3.83) and the negative (M = 15.8, SD = 4.84) mood conditions, F(1,62) = 1.01, p N .05. A signal detection analysis of recognition data using a recognition test comprising 16 statements (8 original and 8 distracter items) revealed no difference in recognition between the positive (d M = 4.84, SD = 1.82) and negative (d M = 5.19, SD = 2.04) mood conditions, F (1,62) = 0.51, p N .05. In addition, an analysis of recognition bias also failed to show any differences between the positive ( M = 7.47, SD = 2.21) and negative ( M = 7, SD = 1.95) mood conditions, F (1,62) = 0.81, p N .05. Thus, neither recall nor recognition memory results show any mood-congruent effect, suggesting that selective attention to, and memory for mood congruent information was not a source of the blaming the victim effect observed. When considered jointly, these results conrm that neither mood effects on processing style, nor mood-congruent effects on the information remembered can explain the results, leaving the motivational account as the most likely explanation of the results obtained. Discussion Receiving information about the misfortunes of innocent people challenges our cherished belief in a just and predictable world. By assigning some blame to the victim it is possible to alleviate such distress and to maintain belief in predictability and personal control (Lerner, 1980). Overall, our results show that positive mood reduced, whereas negative mood increased people's tendency to blame the victim. We also found that, paradoxically, in-group victims were judged as more responsible for negative outcomes compared to outgroup victims. These ndings have several interesting theoretical and practical implications. Theoretical implications How well can the three theories we considered in the introduction explain our ndings? Previous research has shown that temporary mood states can have a profound inuence on cognitive and motivational processes in social judgments (Forgas, 2002, 2006), inuencing both the content and process of cognition, as well as affecting people's motivational resources to cope with adverse information (Forgas, 2002, 2006; Trope et al., 2006). Overall, the present results are most consistent with a motivational explanation, as we found no evidence either for mood effects on processing strategies, nor for mood-

congruent effects. As the processing latency data indicated no difference across the mood conditions, increased blaming the victim in negative mood and decreased blaming in positive mood was not due to the differential processing of the target information. Further, moodcongruence also cannot explain our ndings, given the absence of any mood-congruent effects on memory and evaluative judgments. Therefore, the motivational account suggesting that positive mood may act as a motivational resource when dealing with threatening information remains the most plausible explanation for our ndings (Trope & Neter, 1994). Reduced blaming the victim in a happy compared to a sad mood is consistent with the idea that positive mood can function as a resource, allowing happy people to more effectively cope with adverse and threatening information (Raghunathan & Trope, 2002; Trope, Ferguson, & Raghunathan, 2000). Prior work on the just world effect also favors a motivational rather than a cognitive explanation. Several studies found that bolstering a person's motivational resources, such as offering social support, and increasing self worth allows individuals to better deal with threatening information without resorting to victim blaming (Furnham, 2003). This experiment conrms that positive mood may function in a similar way, as a resource that can reduce the motivation to blame the victim as a justice-preservation strategy. The evidence we presented for such an explanation here is somewhat indirect, and we recognize that alternative theoretical explanations may well be possible. Following the demonstration of mood effects on the just world bias here, the more detailed analysis of the precise strategies responsible for this effect will be the task of further research. Group membership also inuenced the attribution of responsibility and dissociation from the victim, but not the overall evaluation of the victim. To the extent that the misfortunes of an in-group victim present a greater threat to the belief that one lives in a just predictable world, it makes sense that participants felt a stronger need to blame, and dissociate themselves from an in-group victim. However, the absence of an interaction between mood effects and group membership suggests that the motivational benets of positive mood in reducing the blaming the victim effect were sufciently powerful to apply equally to in-group and out-group victims. Our results also suggest that responsibility attribution and dissociation were more effective techniques for restoring just world beliefs than simply devaluing the victim as a person (Correia, Vala, & Aguiar, 2001; Karuza & Carey, 1984). The absence of mood effects on the evaluation measure is also consistent with this idea. Practical implications Exposure to information about adversity befalling innocent others is a daily experience that challenges our beliefs in a predictable and fair world. This study was successful in showing that transient moods can play an important role in determining how people react to such information. The common propensity to engage in victim blame seems highly dependent on one's mood: happy persons are less likely to engage in such strategies than are people in a negative mood, a nding with some interesting practical implications. For example, in legal and forensic settings exposure to graphic and threatening evidence may inuence a juror's ability to remain objective (Bright & Goodman-Delahunty, 2004; Diamond, 2006). The present study suggests that mood may exert an additional inuence on how such information is perceived and attributed. The common assumption by legal professionals that jurors make decisions based on rational processes is increasingly open to questioning (Forgas, 2010). The nding that happy people are less inclined to blame a victim may have important implications for the way news stories and political messages are interpreted in the electronic and print media. Affective inuences on blaming the victim may also be important in organisational, clinical and educational settings where the combination of mood and in-group vs. out-group victim status may inuence responsibility attributions.

L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239243

243

Limitations and future prospects The kind of mood effects on defensive attributions such as the just world bias demonstrated here can be highly sensitive to contextual and situational variables. There is scope in future studies to explore how situational factors such as the type of victim, the nature of the crime, the personal relevance of the incident and personality variables may interact and moderate mood effects on blaming the victim (Hafer & Bgue, 2005). As our study found that mood signicantly inuenced blaming the victim strategies (attributing responsibility and dissociation), but not the evaluation of the victim, it would also be useful in future work to explore the specic mechanisms responsible for these effects. Further, it would also be useful to explore the generalizability of our results to various real-life situations. Future studies may also incorporate an intermediate, baseline neutral mood condition in order to explore the relative contribution of positive and negative moods to defensive attributions. In addition, future work might also look at the consequences of specic emotions, such as anger, disgust, and fear on blaming the victim (Lerner & Keltner, 2000). Notwithstanding these limitations, the present results offer clear support for the proposition that unrelated prior mood states have a signicant inuence on people's need to defend their belief in a just world. It seems that a happy mood acts as a prophylactic against threatening information about the unpredictability of negative events. Although more work is needed before we can be condent about the specic mechanisms responsible for these effects, motivational processes are likely to play an important role (Lerner, 1980). In conclusion, the need to explain why undeserved misfortunes occur has been a major puzzle for moral philosophers and writers since time immemorial. Since Lerner and Simmons (1966) pioneering work, we know the need to maintain an illusion of mastery and predictability plays an important role in such judgments. This experiment extends recent research on affect and motivated cognition (Alter & Forgas, 2007; Bower, 1981; Forgas, 1995, 2002) to the new domain of just world attributions, and shows that positive mood reduces, and negative mood increases the need to blame victims for their misfortunes. Our results are broadly consistent with recent affect motivation theorising (Raghunathan & Trope, 2002; Trope & Neter, 1994), and suggest that further research on affective inuences on just world attributions is likely to be of considerable theoretical as well as applied interest. References
Aguiar, P., Vala, J., Correia, I., & Pereira, C. (2008). Justice in our world and in that of others: Belief in a just world and reactions to victims. Social Justice Research, 21, 5068. Alter, A. L., & Forgas, J. P. (2007). On being happy but fearing failure: The effects of mood on self-handicapping strategies. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 947954. Bless, H., & Fiedler, K. (2006). Mood and the regulation of information processing and behavior. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Affect in social thinking and behavior (pp. 6584). New York: Psychology Press. Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129148. Bower, G. H., & Forgas, J. P. (2001). Mood and social memory. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Handbook of affect and social cognition (pp. 95120). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Bright, D. A., & Goodman-Delahunty, J. (2004). The inuence of gruesome verbal evidence on mock juror verdicts. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 11, 154166. Correia, I., & Vala, J. (2003). When will a victim be secondarily victimized? The effect of observer's belief in a just world, victim's innocence and persistence of suffering. Social Justice Research, 16, 379400. Correia, I., Vala, J., & Aguiar, P. (2001). The effects of belief in a just world and victim's innocence on secondary victimization, judgments of justice and deservingness. Social Justice Research, 14, 327342. Correia, I., Vala, J., & Aguiar, P. (2007). Victims innocence, social categorization and the threat to the belief in a just world. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 3138.

Dalbert, C. (1999). The world is more just for me than generally: About the personal belief in a just world's scale validity. Social Justice Research, 12, 7998. Dalbert, C. (2001). The justice motive as a personal resource: Dealing with challenges and critical life events. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Dalbert, C. (2002). Beliefs in a just world as a buffer against anger. Social Justice Research, 15, 123145. Diamond, S. S. (2006). Beyond fantasy and nightmare: a portrait of the jury. Buffalo Law Review, 54, 717763. Eich, E., & Macaulay, D. (2000). Are real moods required to reveal mood-congruent and mood-dependent memory? Psychological Science, 11, 244248. Forgas, J. P. (1992). Affect and social perception: Research evidence and an integrative theory. In W. Stroebe, & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology, 3. (pp. 183223)Oxford, England: John Wiley & Sons. Forgas, J. P. (1995). Mood and judgment: The affect infusion model (AIM). Psychological Bulletin, 117, 3966. Forgas, J. P. (1998). On being happy but mistaken: Mood effects on the fundamental attribution error. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 318331. Forgas, J. P. (2002). Feeling and doing: Affective inuences on interpersonal behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 128. Forgas, J. P. (2006). Affect in social thinking and behaviour. New York: Psychology Press. Forgas, J. P. (2010). Affect in legal and forensic settings: The cognitive benets of not being too happy. In R. Wiener & B. Bornstein (Eds.), Emotion and the law: Psychological perspectives. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 56. (pp. 1344). New York: Springer. Forgas, J. P. (2011). Can negative affect eliminate the power of rst impressions? Affective inuences on primacy and recency effects in impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 425429. Forgas, J. P., & Bower, G. H. (1987). Mood effects on person-perception judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 5360. Forgas, J. P., Goldenberg, L., & Unkelbach, C. (2009). Can bad weather improve your memory? A eld study of mood effects on memory in a real-life setting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 54, 254259. Furnham, A. (2003). Belief in a just world: Research progress over the last decade. Personality and Individual Differences, 34, 795817. Gruman, J. C., & Sloan, R. P. (1983). Disease as justice: Perceptions of the victims of physical illness. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 4, 3946. Hafer, C. L. (2000). Do innocent victims threaten the belief in a just world? Evidence from a modied stroop task. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(2), 165173. Hafer, C. L., & Bgue, L. (2005). Experimental research on just-world theory: Problems, developments, and future challenges. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 128167. Karuza, J., & Carey, O. (1984). Relative preference and adaptiveness of behavioral blame for observers of rape victims. Journal of Personality, 52, 249260. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. : New York Plenum Press. Lerner, M. J., & Goldberg, J. H. (1999). When do decent people blame victims? The differing effects of the explicit-rational and implicit-experiential cognitive systems. In S. Chaiken & T. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology (pp. 627640). New York: Guilford Press. Lerner, M. J., & Simmons, C. H. (1966). Observer's reaction to the innocent victim: Compassion or rejection? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 203210. Lerner, J. S., Goldberg, J. E., & Tetlock, P. E. (1998). Sober second thought: The effects of accountability, anger, and authoritarianism on attributions of responsibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 563574. Lerner, J. S., & Keltner, D. (2000). Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specic inuences on judgement and choice. Cognition & Emotion. Special Issue: Emotion, Cognition, and Decision Making, 14, 473493. Maes, J. (1998). Eight stages in the development of research on construct of belief in a just world? In L. Montada, & M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Responses to victimizations and belief in a just world. Critical issues in social justice, 278. (pp. 163185) New York, NY, US: Plenum Press. Murray, C. B., & Stahly, G. B. (1987). Some victims are derogated more than others. Western Journal of Black Studies, 11, 177180. Raghunathan, R., & Trope, Y. (2002). Walking the tightrope between feeling good and being accurate: Mood as a resource in processing persuasive messages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 510525. Tan, H. B., & Forgas, J. P. (2010). When happiness makes us selsh, but sadness makes us fair: Affective inuences on interpersonal strategies in the dictator game. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(3), 571576. Thornton, B. (1984). Defensive attribution of responsibility: Evidence for an arousalbased motivational bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 721734. Trope, Y., Ferguson, M., & Raghunathan, R. (2000). Mood-as-a-resource in processing self-relevant information. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Handbook of affect and social cognition (pp. 256272). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Trope, Y., Igou, E. R., & Burke, C. T. (2006). Mood as a resource in structuring goal pursuit. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Affect in social thinking and behavior. New York: Psychology Press. Trope, Y., & Neter, E. (1994). Reconciling competing motives in self-evaluation: The role of self-control in feedback seeking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 646657.