Mood congruent encoding and retrieval

Abstract

This study was designed in an attempt to clarify the unresolved issue of the source, or location of mood congruent recall. It was hypothesised that the mood congruence effect may occur at both early (encoding) and late (retrieval) stages of memory processing. One hundred university students underwent a musical mood induction procedure to produce either happy or depressed mood, prior either to learning or to recalling a list of positive, negative and neutral words. The results supported the hypothesis in demonstrating a significant interaction between mood at encoding and type of word recalled, and additionally between mood at retrieval and type of word recalled. Happy mood, but not depressed mood, caused selective processing of the word list in inhibiting the processing of negative words. These results are discussed in terms of previous research, and suggestions made to account for the pattern of effects obtained. Empirical, theoretical and clinical implications are outlined.