A study was conducted to investigate the relation between positive affect, feeling, task interest and performance. The participants of the study were 109 post secondary students from the business school in Singapore. The age range was between 17 and 20 years old (M = 18.13, SD = .70). The students of the study solved two problems, the Tower of Hanoi task (paper and pen format, well-defined task) and nine dot problem (insight task). Before problem solving, the participants rated their mood using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS, Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and pleasantness rating of unfamiliar words (Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987). After the tasks, they rated the PANAS and task interest. The findings supported the hypotheses that there is a positive relation between positive affect and successful task completion (Fredrickson, 1998), between task interest and successful performance (Amabile, 1983). The findings suggest a change in negative affect (lower than the initial state) as an indicator of the presence of successful performance, particularly in solving a well-defined task (Schwarz, 1990). The study expands the paradigm of inclusion of emotions in regulating performance, including positive and negative affect, task interest and general feeling.
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