The lack of any positive mood or positive urgency effects on medial frontal neural responses to alcohol aromas could suggest that positive emotion-based rash action is less robust or perhaps somewhat more multi-factorial. For instance, much anecdotal evidence for positive urgency is rooted in social contexts, such as group “riots” after sports wins (e.g., Kornefel, 2002). Additionally, emotional intensity can also be hard to match across valences, with negative emotions also being inherently more intense than those of positive emotions (see Cyders & Coskunpinar, 2011). Somewhat contrary to that assertion, however, was our unanticipated finding of slightly greater self-reported arousal in the positive mood induction than in the negative mood induction. Additionally, positive mood did increase subjective craving for alcohol, even though it did not alter neural responses to alcohol cues. The sample size and lack of power may be a consideration in the absence of findings related to positive mood induction. It is also possible that positive urgency and positive mood might be related to different brain regions than those investigated in the current study.
