Mood, information congruency, and overload

Marketers seek new ways of gaining attention in our age of information bombardment, and one popular way has been to utilize schema-incongruent language. The present article investigates how a common situational factor-consumer mood-influences consumers' ability to process incongruent information in an information overload environment. Two experiments find positive mood increases (and negative mood decreases) consumers' ability to respond to incongruent information. Both experiments utilize computer reaction tests on healthy adult consumers; the first uses the Stroop test, the second uses the IAT (Implicit Association Test). This article discusses the implications of the findings for marketers attempting to gain consumers attention as well as the theoretical implications for the growing research on consumer mood and processing.