HAPPY people see the wood while sad people tend to focus on the trees, it
seems.
Psychologists Karen Gasper and Jerry Clore tested people in good and bad
moods on their ability to recreate a drawing from memory. They found that happy
people concentrated on the general effect, while sad people went for the
detail.
When they were shown an ambiguous drawing, happy people were also more likely
to remember and redraw it as a familiar object such as a face. Reproductions by
unhappy people were less recognisable and less like the original drawing (
Psychological Science, vol 13, p 34).
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The results suggest that mood can affect the way people process
information鈥攚e think globally when we are happy and get hung up on details
when we are sad, says Gasper.