The Effect of Mood on Judgments of Subjective Well-Being: Nine Tests of the Judgment Model

Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluationof the quality of a person’s life as a whole. Thus, they should reflectrelatively important and stable characteristics of that person’s life.Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, suchas the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgmentsare made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studiesused small sample sizes, and few replications have been attempted. Ninedirect and conceptual replications of past studies testing the effects ofmood on life satisfaction judgments were conducted using sample sizes thatwere considerably larger than previous studies (Ns = 202, 200, 269, 118,320, 401, 285, 129, 122). Most of the nine studies resulted innonsignificant effects on life satisfaction and happiness judgments, andthose that were significant were substantially smaller than effects foundin previous research.______________________________________