Abstract
This research proposes that the cognitive activity associated with the experience of an emotional state mediates the occurrence of mood-congruent processing. Two experiments examined the role of cognitive activity in selective processing of words in a mood congruence paradigm. Four induction procedures were used: a depressed-mood induction, a schema induction organized around the theme of writing a paper, an arousal induction, and a control neutral-mood induction. The memory task consisted of recalling a word list composed of negatively associated and thematically organized words. Selective processing was demonstrated in conjunction with the depressed-mood and organizational-schema induction procedures. In contrast, the arousal and neutral induction procedures did not produce selective processing of words from the list. The findings support the thesis that cognitive activity mediates the selective processing typical of mood congruence as distinct from arousal processes per se. The findings are discussed with respect to the resource allocation model and semantic network theory.
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The research was supported in part by a grant from the Student Resource Assistance Committee at the University of New Mexico to the first author and a grant from the College of Arts and Sciences to the second author. Portions of the research were presented by H. C. Ellis as part of a Science Directorate invited address at the 103rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, New York, August 1995, and at an invited symposium on memory (Alice Healy, Chair) at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association meeting in Boulder, CO, May 1995. Portions of this research were also presented by L. J. Varner at the Southwestern Cognition Society, Arlington, TX, May 1993.
—Accepted by previous editor, Geoffrey R. Loftus
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Varner, L.J., Ellis, H.C. Cognitive activity and physiological arousal: Processes that mediate mood-congruent memory. Mem Cogn 26, 939–950 (1998). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201174
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201174