Question:
Passage:
Every conscious mental state carries a quality we call mood. We are always in some mood, pleasant or unpleasant to some degree. Bad moods may come from too little positive reinforcement in a person's life, along with too many punishments. Moods differ from emotions in one clear way: emotions are tied to a specific object, while moods are not. This split is not perfect, since emotions can also be aimed at something broad (a person can be angry at people in general), while a mood still carries a general sense about the state of the world at large. Moods show up as positive or negative feelings linked to health, personality, or how good a person feels life is. Moods can also grow out of an emotion, such as the mood that follows a specific event like failing to secure a loan. In that sense, a mood is the mind's judgment on the recent past. Goldie notes that an emotion can rise and fall inside a mood, while an emotion can still carry traits that are not object specific.
Moods matter to marketing because they color outlook and bias judgment. This is why consumer confidence surveys matter, since consumer confidence reflects the national mood. There is mood congruence when a person's thoughts and actions fall in line with their mood. Goleman describes this as a constant stream of feeling that runs in perfect harmony with a person's stream of thought. Mood congruence happens because a positive mood brings pleasant associations that soften later thoughts and actions, while a negative mood brings pessimistic associations that shape later judgment and behavior. A consumer in a good mood is more optimistic and confident about buying, and more willing to put up with things like waiting in a queue. Businesses try to put customers in the right mood using music and friendly staff, or place bakeries inside malls so the smell of fresh bread pulls shoppers in.
Thayer treats mood as a mix of biological and psychological influences, a kind of clinical thermometer that reflects everything going on inside and outside a person. For Thayer, the two building blocks of mood are energy and tension, combined in different amounts. A specific mixture of energy and tension, together with the thoughts they influence, produces moods. He describes four mood states:
- Calm-energy: the optimal mood for feeling good.
- Calm-tiredness: mild tiredness without stress, which can still feel pleasant.
- Tense-energy: a low level of anxiety suited to a fight-or-flight response.
- Tense-tiredness: a mix of fatigue and anxiety behind the unpleasant feeling of depression.
People generally feel down or feel good because of events happening around them, and this adds up to the national mood. People feel elated when their national soccer team wins an international match, and low when the team loses. An elated mood of calm-energy is an optimistic mood, which is good for business. Consumers, as socially involved individuals, are shaped by the prevailing social climate, and marketers talk about the national mood running for or against conspicuous consumption. Moods do change. Writing early in the nineteenth century, Tocqueville describes an American elite embarrassed by showy material display; sixty years later, in the Gilded Age, many people were eager to embrace a showy, materialistic style instead. The hard part is predicting a shift in national mood, since a change in mood affects everything from buying stocks to buying houses and washing machines. Thayer would argue that we should watch for national events likely to push people toward a tense-tiredness state or a calm-energy state, since these two extremes are more likely to shape behavior. Artists sensitive to national moods capture these long-term shifts. One example is the emotional distance between Charles Dickens's sentimental account of the death of Little Nell and Oscar Wilde's cruel joke about it (that one would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell), a shift from high Victorian sentiment to the sharper cynicism found later in writers like Thomas Hardy and artists like Aubrey Beardsley.
Whenever the mind is not fully absorbed, consciousness is no longer focused and ordered, and under such conditions the mind drifts toward unpleasant thoughts, building a negative mood. Csikszentmihalyi argues that the human need to keep consciousness fully active drives a good deal of consumer behavior. Sometimes it does not matter what a person is shopping for; the act of shopping itself is one way to fill the void in consciousness when there is nothing else to do.
Question: Which one of the following statements best summarizes the above passage?
Passage:
Every conscious mental state carries a quality we call mood. We are always in some mood, pleasant or unpleasant to some degree. Bad moods may come from too little positive reinforcement in a person's life, along with too many punishments. Moods differ from emotions in one clear way: emotions are tied to a specific object, while moods are not. This split is not perfect, since emotions can also be aimed at something broad (a person can be angry at people in general), while a mood still carries a general sense about the state of the world at large. Moods show up as positive or negative feelings linked to health, personality, or how good a person feels life is. Moods can also grow out of an emotion, such as the mood that follows a specific event like failing to secure a loan. In that sense, a mood is the mind's judgment on the recent past. Goldie notes that an emotion can rise and fall inside a mood, while an emotion can still carry traits that are not object specific.
Moods matter to marketing because they color outlook and bias judgment. This is why consumer confidence surveys matter, since consumer confidence reflects the national mood. There is mood congruence when a person's thoughts and actions fall in line with their mood. Goleman describes this as a constant stream of feeling that runs in perfect harmony with a person's stream of thought. Mood congruence happens because a positive mood brings pleasant associations that soften later thoughts and actions, while a negative mood brings pessimistic associations that shape later judgment and behavior. A consumer in a good mood is more optimistic and confident about buying, and more willing to put up with things like waiting in a queue. Businesses try to put customers in the right mood using music and friendly staff, or place bakeries inside malls so the smell of fresh bread pulls shoppers in.
Thayer treats mood as a mix of biological and psychological influences, a kind of clinical thermometer that reflects everything going on inside and outside a person. For Thayer, the two building blocks of mood are energy and tension, combined in different amounts. A specific mixture of energy and tension, together with the thoughts they influence, produces moods. He describes four mood states:
- Calm-energy: the optimal mood for feeling good.
- Calm-tiredness: mild tiredness without stress, which can still feel pleasant.
- Tense-energy: a low level of anxiety suited to a fight-or-flight response.
- Tense-tiredness: a mix of fatigue and anxiety behind the unpleasant feeling of depression.
People generally feel down or feel good because of events happening around them, and this adds up to the national mood. People feel elated when their national soccer team wins an international match, and low when the team loses. An elated mood of calm-energy is an optimistic mood, which is good for business. Consumers, as socially involved individuals, are shaped by the prevailing social climate, and marketers talk about the national mood running for or against conspicuous consumption. Moods do change. Writing early in the nineteenth century, Tocqueville describes an American elite embarrassed by showy material display; sixty years later, in the Gilded Age, many people were eager to embrace a showy, materialistic style instead. The hard part is predicting a shift in national mood, since a change in mood affects everything from buying stocks to buying houses and washing machines. Thayer would argue that we should watch for national events likely to push people toward a tense-tiredness state or a calm-energy state, since these two extremes are more likely to shape behavior. Artists sensitive to national moods capture these long-term shifts. One example is the emotional distance between Charles Dickens's sentimental account of the death of Little Nell and Oscar Wilde's cruel joke about it (that one would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell), a shift from high Victorian sentiment to the sharper cynicism found later in writers like Thomas Hardy and artists like Aubrey Beardsley.
Whenever the mind is not fully absorbed, consciousness is no longer focused and ordered, and under such conditions the mind drifts toward unpleasant thoughts, building a negative mood. Csikszentmihalyi argues that the human need to keep consciousness fully active drives a good deal of consumer behavior. Sometimes it does not matter what a person is shopping for; the act of shopping itself is one way to fill the void in consciousness when there is nothing else to do.
Question: Which one of the following statements best summarizes the above passage?
Every conscious mental state carries a quality we call mood. We are always in some mood, pleasant or unpleasant to some degree. Bad moods may come from too little positive reinforcement in a person's life, along with too many punishments. Moods differ from emotions in one clear way: emotions are tied to a specific object, while moods are not. This split is not perfect, since emotions can also be aimed at something broad (a person can be angry at people in general), while a mood still carries a general sense about the state of the world at large. Moods show up as positive or negative feelings linked to health, personality, or how good a person feels life is. Moods can also grow out of an emotion, such as the mood that follows a specific event like failing to secure a loan. In that sense, a mood is the mind's judgment on the recent past. Goldie notes that an emotion can rise and fall inside a mood, while an emotion can still carry traits that are not object specific.
Moods matter to marketing because they color outlook and bias judgment. This is why consumer confidence surveys matter, since consumer confidence reflects the national mood. There is mood congruence when a person's thoughts and actions fall in line with their mood. Goleman describes this as a constant stream of feeling that runs in perfect harmony with a person's stream of thought. Mood congruence happens because a positive mood brings pleasant associations that soften later thoughts and actions, while a negative mood brings pessimistic associations that shape later judgment and behavior. A consumer in a good mood is more optimistic and confident about buying, and more willing to put up with things like waiting in a queue. Businesses try to put customers in the right mood using music and friendly staff, or place bakeries inside malls so the smell of fresh bread pulls shoppers in.
Thayer treats mood as a mix of biological and psychological influences, a kind of clinical thermometer that reflects everything going on inside and outside a person. For Thayer, the two building blocks of mood are energy and tension, combined in different amounts. A specific mixture of energy and tension, together with the thoughts they influence, produces moods. He describes four mood states:
- Calm-energy: the optimal mood for feeling good.
- Calm-tiredness: mild tiredness without stress, which can still feel pleasant.
- Tense-energy: a low level of anxiety suited to a fight-or-flight response.
- Tense-tiredness: a mix of fatigue and anxiety behind the unpleasant feeling of depression.
People generally feel down or feel good because of events happening around them, and this adds up to the national mood. People feel elated when their national soccer team wins an international match, and low when the team loses. An elated mood of calm-energy is an optimistic mood, which is good for business. Consumers, as socially involved individuals, are shaped by the prevailing social climate, and marketers talk about the national mood running for or against conspicuous consumption. Moods do change. Writing early in the nineteenth century, Tocqueville describes an American elite embarrassed by showy material display; sixty years later, in the Gilded Age, many people were eager to embrace a showy, materialistic style instead. The hard part is predicting a shift in national mood, since a change in mood affects everything from buying stocks to buying houses and washing machines. Thayer would argue that we should watch for national events likely to push people toward a tense-tiredness state or a calm-energy state, since these two extremes are more likely to shape behavior. Artists sensitive to national moods capture these long-term shifts. One example is the emotional distance between Charles Dickens's sentimental account of the death of Little Nell and Oscar Wilde's cruel joke about it (that one would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell), a shift from high Victorian sentiment to the sharper cynicism found later in writers like Thomas Hardy and artists like Aubrey Beardsley.
Whenever the mind is not fully absorbed, consciousness is no longer focused and ordered, and under such conditions the mind drifts toward unpleasant thoughts, building a negative mood. Csikszentmihalyi argues that the human need to keep consciousness fully active drives a good deal of consumer behavior. Sometimes it does not matter what a person is shopping for; the act of shopping itself is one way to fill the void in consciousness when there is nothing else to do.
Question: Which one of the following statements best summarizes the above passage?
Show Hint
Look for the option that covers the whole passage's focus on marketing and consumer behavior, not just one paragraph's detail.
Updated On: Jul 10, 2026
- The passage highlights how moods affect nations.
- The passage highlights the importance of moods and emotions in marketing.
- The passage draws a distinction between moods and emotions.
- Some writers influenced national moods through their writings.
Show Solution
Verified By Collegedunia
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Understanding the Question:
This question asks for the one statement that best captures what the entire passage is about, not just one part of it. A best summary has to cover the passage from its opening idea through its closing idea, not just a detail mentioned once.
Step 2: Key Approach:
Read the passage as a whole and note its central thread before checking each option. The passage opens by defining mood and separating it from emotion, then spends most of its length on how moods (national mood, mood congruence, Thayer's four states) shape consumer behavior and marketing decisions, and closes with Csikszentmihalyi's point about shopping filling a gap in consciousness. A summary should reflect that marketing thread since it runs through most of the passage, not just a detail from one paragraph.
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Option (AA), the passage highlights how moods affect nations, picks out only the national mood idea from one paragraph. Nations and national mood are mentioned as an example of mood in general, not as the passage's main subject, so this option is too narrow.
Option (CC), the passage draws a distinction between moods and emotions, is true, but only of the first paragraph. Once that distinction is made early on, the passage moves on to marketing and consumer behavior and never returns to the mood versus emotion debate, so this cannot be the best summary of the whole piece.
Option (DD), some writers influenced national moods through their writings, misreads a small example (Dickens, Wilde, Hardy, Beardsley) used to show how art reflects mood shifts. That example supports a bigger point about changing national mood; it is not itself the passage's message.
A fifth original option about Thayer's four mood states also lifts out a single paragraph and treats it as the whole passage, which it is not.
Option (BB), the passage highlights the importance of moods and emotions in marketing, matches the passage's actual center of gravity: it explains mood, then spends most of its length showing why moods matter for consumer confidence, buying behavior, and how marketers try to manage mood to influence customers.
Step 4: Final Answer:
The best summary is that the passage highlights the importance of moods and emotions in marketing, which is option (BB). \[ \boxed{\text{Option B}} \]
This question asks for the one statement that best captures what the entire passage is about, not just one part of it. A best summary has to cover the passage from its opening idea through its closing idea, not just a detail mentioned once.
Step 2: Key Approach:
Read the passage as a whole and note its central thread before checking each option. The passage opens by defining mood and separating it from emotion, then spends most of its length on how moods (national mood, mood congruence, Thayer's four states) shape consumer behavior and marketing decisions, and closes with Csikszentmihalyi's point about shopping filling a gap in consciousness. A summary should reflect that marketing thread since it runs through most of the passage, not just a detail from one paragraph.
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Option (AA), the passage highlights how moods affect nations, picks out only the national mood idea from one paragraph. Nations and national mood are mentioned as an example of mood in general, not as the passage's main subject, so this option is too narrow.
Option (CC), the passage draws a distinction between moods and emotions, is true, but only of the first paragraph. Once that distinction is made early on, the passage moves on to marketing and consumer behavior and never returns to the mood versus emotion debate, so this cannot be the best summary of the whole piece.
Option (DD), some writers influenced national moods through their writings, misreads a small example (Dickens, Wilde, Hardy, Beardsley) used to show how art reflects mood shifts. That example supports a bigger point about changing national mood; it is not itself the passage's message.
A fifth original option about Thayer's four mood states also lifts out a single paragraph and treats it as the whole passage, which it is not.
Option (BB), the passage highlights the importance of moods and emotions in marketing, matches the passage's actual center of gravity: it explains mood, then spends most of its length showing why moods matter for consumer confidence, buying behavior, and how marketers try to manage mood to influence customers.
Step 4: Final Answer:
The best summary is that the passage highlights the importance of moods and emotions in marketing, which is option (BB). \[ \boxed{\text{Option B}} \]
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