Concept
Mood (psychology)
Overview
In psychology, a mood is an affective state. In contrast to emotions or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence. In other words, people usually talk about being in a good mood or a bad mood. There are many different factors that influence mood, and these can lead to positive or negative effects on mood.
Mood also differs from temperament or personality traits which are even longer-lasting. Nevertheless, personality traits such as optimism and neuroticism predispose certain types of moods. Long-term disturbances of mood such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder are considered mood disorders. Mood is an internal, subjective state, but it often can be inferred from posture and other behaviors. "We can be sent into a mood by an unexpected event, from the happiness of seeing an old friend to the anger of discovering betrayal by a partner. We may also fall into a mood."
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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An ever watchful tendency to renew the original resultant pleasure of wit exerts thereby a lowering effect upon the still fluctuating foreconscious expression of the thought. Most people are probably capable of making jests when in a happy mood; aptitude for joking independent of the mood is found only in a few persons. Finally, the most powerful incentive for wit-work is the presence of strong tendencies which…
Sigmund Freud, Wit and its relation to the unconscious
Names Mood several times; states what Mood is.
The deepest difference, practically, in the moral life of man is the difference between the easy-going and the strenuous mood. When in the easy-going mood the shrinking from present ill is our ruling consideration. The strenuous mood, on the contrary, makes us quite indifferent to present ill, if only the greater ideal be attained. The capacity for the strenuous mood probably lies slumbering in every man, but it has…
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Names Mood several times; opens on Mood.
XIV. This kind of disputing is very closely connected with the mode of discussion adopted by you lawyers in reply, and still more closely with that adopted by philosophers, as they share with the orators in the employment of that general conclusion which is drawn from inconsistent sentences, which is called by dialecticians the third mood, and by rhetoricians an enthymeme. There are many other moods used by the…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
Names Mood several times; states what Mood is.
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.