Mood-congruent and mood-incongruent learning
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Published on: February 20, 2014
M Rinck1, U Glowalla, K Schneider
1Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany.
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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