Misattribution of Affect

The tendency for individuals to have difficulty disentangling their affective responses to two events occurring in close proximity in time and space. Consequently, individuals confuse the sources of their affective responses. A change in core affect due to one source is mistakenly attributed to another; feeling happy, the person mistakenly attributes the happy feelings to the object and therefore perceives the object to be more pleasant that it would otherwise seem.

Reference:
GaPayne, B. K., Hall, D. L., Cameron, C. D., & Bishara, A. J. (2010). A process model of affect misattribution. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10): 1397-1408. doi: 10.1177/0146167210383440

Schwarz, N. (1990). Feelings as information: Informative and motivational functions of affective states. In Sorrentino, R.M. & Higgins, E.T. (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 527–561). New York: Guilford Press.