Mood-congruency effects in self-relevant words

Abstract

In this experiment, one of three moods: positive, negative, neutral, was induced with Velten technique and music. Subjects were then presented with a word at a time from a list of trait words, which were pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. They were to decide whether the word described their self, and respond with 'yes' (relevant) or 'no' (irrelevant) buttons. After the task, they were given five minutes for an incidental free recall test. Results indicated that induced mood affected memory, but not judgements of self-relevance. Mood congruent recall effects were found only for self-relevant words, and more self-relevant than irrelevant words were recalled if they were mood congruent. It was concluded that mood effects were different depending on whether the information was self-relevant, and that mood-congruency effects were found only for self-relevant information.