Abstract
In their connectionist model of cognitive dissonance, Van Overwalle & Jordens (2002) put forward the hypothesis that positive affect increases behaviour-induced attitudes, while negative affect decreases attitudes. In this article, this hypothesised role of affect was tested for two well-known paradigms in the cognitive dissonance literature: free choice and induced compliance. For the free-choice paradigm, we replicated the findings in the difficult-high choice condition of Shultz, Léveillé, and Lepper (1999) and additionally induced negative mood. As predicted, negative mood resulted in a more negative attitude compared to no mood induction. For the induced compliance paradigm, we replicated the Linder, Cooper, and Jones (1967) dissonance and reinforcement findings and additionally induced opposite mood in the nochoice (reinforcement) conditions. Specifically, we induced positive mood in the low reward condition and negative mood in the high reward condition. Again as predicted, positive mood increased the attitude and negative mood decreased the attitude, resulting in an elimination of the reinforcement effect.