Mothers' Judgment in Moments of Anger.

The influence of anger on mothers' judgments of children and socialization was examined. When in angry, happy, and neutral moods, 48 mothers made judg ments about their own 7-year-olds and also about unknown children seen on videotape. Compared with emotionally-neutral mothers, angry mothers ex pected their children to act more negatively and evaluated their children's cur rent problems as more serious. On the videotape task, angry mothers expected that interactions would become more negative, compliance would be more dif ficult to obtain, and greater sternness would be required. When children were noncompliant, angry mothers made more negative attributions about those chil dren, became more upset, and evaluated disapproving responses more favora bly. Anger had more pronounced effects on judgments when children's behav ior was ambiguous than when it was clearly negative. The findings support proposals that anger activates anger-consistent cognitions, induces negative pa rental judgment, and thereby may negatively bias parents' reactions.