[Effect of mood and analytic and intuitive judgement tendencies in the "false-fame" effect]

In two experiments the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) was used to examine the effects of mood on automatic and consciously controlled processes in a fame judgment task. Thirty nonfamous names were presented once in a study phase to the subjects. After a mood manipulation subjects performed a fame judgment task. The old nonfamous names were presented together with new nonfamous and famous names. Subjects got either the hint that names repeated from the study phase were all famous (inclusion test) or that they were all nonfamous (exclusion test). Results, especially the comparison of the inclusion and the exclusion test, indicated that subjects under negative mood based their judgments more on consciously controlled processes, i.e. recollection of names from the study phase. There was only a weak impact on good mood on controlled processes. In respect to automatic consequences of the study phase (familiarity of names) there was no difference between the three mood conditions.