The Effect of Mood Congruency on Word Recall

Mood Dependent Memory (MDM) describes an improvement in memory when mood at the time of encoding matches mood at the time of retrieval. This study investigated the effect of mood congruency and difficulty level of a task on memory. Participants were randomly assigned to either a mood-congruent (happy/happy or sad/sad) or a mood-incongruent condition (happy/sad or sad/happy). In the mood-congruent conditions, the same mood was induced during study and test phases. In the mood-incongruent conditions, different moods were induced during the study and test phases. During a single session, participants study a word list consisting of twenty-five monosyllabic words and then are asked to recall the list. Then they study a word list consisting of twenty-five quadrisyllabic words. The order of the word lists were counterbalanced. After each study and test-phase, participants completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule to measure mood. We hypothesized that the number of words recalled would be highest in the Mood Congruent – monosyllabic condition. We also hypothesized that the number of words recalled would be lowest in the Mood Incongruent – quadrisyllabic condition. To test these hypotheses, undergraduate students (n = 56) participated for class credit and were treated in accordance with IRB guidelines. Repeated measures analysis resulted in no significant interaction between difficulty level of words and the assigned condition (mood-congruent/mood-incongruent), (F(1,54)=2.354, p=.083). Analysis also resulted in no significant differences between reported mood rating and the assigned mood condition (mood-congruent/mood incongruent), (F(1,54)=.614, p=.784). This suggests that the participants\u27 mood correctly matched the assigned mood condition; thus, validating music scores rated by the pilot study participants. There was a significant interaction between difficulty level and the time in which participants completed the study, (F(1,1)=5.164, p=.027). Performance decreased on the difficult word list after the midterm (October 15th)