The Influence of Mood on Feeling of Knowing: Would You Like Some TOTS With That?

Previous studies found that mood affects encoding of semantic information (Madigan & Bollenbach, 1982) and retrieval of episodic memory (Ellis, Thomas, et al., 1985). However, few studies have investigated the effects of mood on feelings of knowing (FOKs) in relation to retrieval of semantic information. Allwood and Björhag (1991) found that mood had no effect on confidence in general knowledge; this is the only study to our knowledge that examines the effects of mood on confidence ratings. The purpose of our study was to determine if mood affects FOKs and the accuracy of those FOK judgments. FOK accuracy was operationally defined as the proportions of each type of FOK correctly judged. We examined effects of mood on semantic information FOKs in 24 undergraduate Butler University students. We induced mood by showing participants 6 positive or negative and 6 neutral IAPS photographs and having them write a story about what they thought was happening to the person in one of the photographs. This writing session lasted for seven minutes and was repeated after 100 trials of the trivia game that tests general knowledge. Mood was measured by questionnaire after each writing sample and upon completion of the trivia game. For the trivia game, participants received two clues (e.g., Rolling Stones-Singer ) and judged whether they knew the answer. After each of the pairs of clues, participants reported an FOK. Participants were given five seconds to make this rating, after which they spent another five seconds either entering their answer (for 100 open-ended items) or choosing the correct answer from four options (for 100 multiple-choice items). Our results suggest that mood does not influence overall accuracy of FOKs regarding the ability to retrieve semantic information, but sad mood may facilitate more accurate monitoring of what is not known