WATERLOO - Being in a bad mood can help with everyday tasks including managing time and focusing attention, but only for a certain group of people, a University of Waterloo study has found.

"High-reactive people did do better when they were in a bad mood," said psychology professor Tara McAuley

People who are high-reactive have rapid, intense and enduring emotional responses - apparently giving them an edge when mired in a bad mood.

In the study, McAuley and PhD student Martyn S. Gabel explored whether emotional reactivity shapes how mood influences the thinking skills needed to navigate the demands and stresses of daily life.

Emotional reactivity is the sensitivity, intensity and duration of emotional responses associated with mood.

The researchers found that people who are high-reactive performed better on executive function tasks when in a bad mood. Low-reactive people, on the other hand, showed the opposite effect with a bad mood hampering their performance.

Improved performance seemed to be the "silver lining" for people who are more emotionally reactive, which comes with frequent and longer-lasting bad moods.

"They are doing better when they're in a bad mood," McAuley said. "We're starting to explore the reason why."

Perhaps it's because high-reactive people are more accustomed to experiencing negative emotions, which makes it less novel and allows them to focus.

"They're not being quite as distracted being in the bad mood," McAuley said.

Emotional reactivity is a spectrum, with high-reactive people on one end and more "chill" people on the other.

While a boost in juggling daily stresses sounds like an advantage, McAuley warns that life is more challenging in many ways for people who are highly-reactive, and generally it takes a toll both physically and emotionally.

"The bad mood is unpleasant," she said.

The next step is unpacking what it is about emotional reactivity that changes how a bad mood influences a person's ability for executive functioning.

The study included 95 participants who completed nine tasks and questionnaires that measure the interplay of mood, emotional reactivity and various working memory and analytic challenges.

McAuley and Gabel's paper appears in the journal Personality & Individual Differences.

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