Ellis and Seibert state that anxious people’s thoughts are different from nonanxious people and those thoughts are related to performance (Ellis & Seibert, 1991, p. 507). Each day, people experience mood changes that affect their performance. Fluctuations in mood are related to various factors: changes in social and personal judgments, spatial judgments, mood congruence and mood affect the ability to recall information (p. 507). Often, depressed and anxious people experience inappropriate reasoning and self-defeating thoughts. They tend to dwell on negative experiences that are often positive experiences (Dept. of Health and Human Services, …show more content…
507). Thoughts that take an individual’s focus away from any task at hand could interfere with performance (p. 508). These thoughts are considered to be irrelevant because they are not applicable to a successful solution for the task at hand. Irrelevant thoughts are distracting and interfere with successful task performance because the attention is diverted (p. 508). Ellis and Seibert found that irrelevant thoughts and successful task performance are negatively related. In their study, they tested a total of 90 introductory psychology students. They used a mood-induction procedure to induce happy, neutral and sad moods. The procedure included 25 self-referent statements that were given at two second intervals. The participants listed all thoughts that came to mind after viewing the mood-induction procedure statements