Developed by social psychologist Joseph Paul Forgas in the early 1990s, it attempts to explain how affect impacts one's ability to process information.
A key assertion of the AIM is that the effects of affect tend to be exacerbated in complex situations that demand substantial cognitive processing.
For example, if a person receives an inordinately large electric bill, they will respond differently if they have had a relaxing and stress-free day than they will if they have just been stuck in traffic for two hours.
Under this latter circumstance, the person will experience high levels of affect infusion, as their agitated state will be made worse upon seeing the electric bill.
Some common activities that tend to produce high affect infusion include: choosing whether or not to drink or take drugs, selecting or getting to know a new partner, explaining a conflict or allocating rewards to a group.
This strategy also involves little influence from mood, as the individual in question will have a fairly clear idea of what information he or she needs (although it is higher on the continuum than direct access processing).
[citation needed] This relationship has been examined in a particular experiment by attempting to manipulate a person's mood in order to produce infusion responses.
The researchers divided the sample into two units of separation, one being age (old and young) and the other being mood valence (happy, neutral and sad).
This is because gambling, when it is a new and unfamiliar experience, complete with the bright lights and colors that are a feature of the average casino, requires a great deal of information processing, making it especially unattractive to someone in a bad mood.
Their research confirmed this notion, but in addition, it was used to positively identify depression as a causal factor of addictive gambling, when the casino has become a familiar environment.
In striving for a deeper understanding of the AIM, scholars have examined different types of behavior that can be expected when affect (mood and emotion) strongly influences information processing.
In consumer research, the AIM has helped to explain how males and females differ in their processing of advertising under happy and sad mood states.