How's Your Life? I Dunno, Is It Raining? [Mixing Memory]

Published: October 6, 2007, 10:39 am

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I'm fascinated by findings that show just how little we know about ourselves. Most of what's going on in our heads occurs below the level of awareness, and behind the often impenetrable barrier of the unconscious. Often when we're asked to make judgments, explain our actions, or assess our current motivational or emotional states, we're pretty much just guessing, and using what, from a third-person perspective, often seems like the least relevant information to do so. One great illustration of this came in a classic experiment by Norbert Schwarz and Gerald Clore(1). They randomly called people in the university directory on either rainy or sunny days, told them they were doing research for another university, and asked them to rate their current mood and their satisfaction with their life "as a whole these days." Previous research had shown that the weather can affect people's current moods, with rain making people

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