Abstract
We report two experiments that investigate the effect of an induced mood on the incidental learning of emotionally toned words. Subjects were put in a happy or sad mood by means of a suggestion technique and rated the emotional valence of a list of words. Later on, they were asked to recall the words in a neutral mood. For words with a strong emotional valence, mood-congruent learning was observed: strongly unpleasant words were recalled better by sad subjects and strongly pleasant words were recalled better by happy subjects. The reverse was true for slightly toned words: here, mood-incongruent learning was observed. Both effects are predicted by a two component processing model that specifies the effect of the mood on the cognitive processes during learning. Further evidence for the model is given by rating times measured in Experiment 2.
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The research reported here was supported in part by the Department of Psychology, University of Marburg, and by Grant G1 123/1-2 from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to Ulrich Glowalla.
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Rinck, M., Glowalla, U. & Schneider, K. Mood-congruent and mood-incongruent learning. Mem Cogn 20, 29–39 (1992). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208251
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208251