The research on mood and memory can be contradicting. While all agree that mood affectivity has an effect on memory, they don’t always agree on which mood is better for memory retention and learning, positive or negative. There is also some speculation when it comes to mood and memory congruity, does a person’s mood affect the kind of information they retain? The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of mood (positive, negative, and neutral) on the amount of information a person can recall and whether or not the type of information they recall is congruent with their mood. Working memory is a mental system that allows a person to temporarily retain information. There has been research that suggests that negative affect reduces working
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The basic purpose of study two was similar to study one in that the basic purpose was to determine if mood had an effect on the amount of information a person can recall and whether there was any congruency between mood and the emotional valence of the information. The independent variable for study 2 was mood but with only two levels: negative and neutral mood. The dependent variable was also memory but instead of having to recall images, the participants had to recall words.
We decided to focus on negative mood because of the results from study one. When we tested the hypothesis that those in the negative condition would perform better on the memory task than those in the positive and neutral conditions we found a positive trend between negative mood and memory, B = .035, and a negative trend between positive mood and memory, B = -.032. Although there was no significant difference between the …show more content…
This was due to faulty randomizing in the survey tool, for any future studies measures will be taken to ensure equal groups. Another problem was that many people were starting the survey but not finishing it. We think that this is because the prompts were to demanding for college students who don’t have a lot of time. This resulted in very little usable data. There was also a problem with participants not taking the survey seriously and entering nonsensical data. A way to control this is to make the survey more engaging so that participants will be engaged and more willing to complete the survey
The basic purpose of study two was similar to study one in that the basic purpose was to determine if mood had an effect on the amount of information a person can recall and whether there was any congruency between mood and the emotional valence of the information. The independent variable for study 2 was mood but with only two levels: negative and neutral mood. The dependent variable was also memory but instead of having to recall images, the participants had to recall words.
We decided to focus on negative mood because of the results from study one. When we tested the hypothesis that those in the negative condition would perform better on the memory task than those in the positive and neutral conditions we found a positive trend between negative mood and memory, B = .035, and a negative trend between positive mood and memory, B = -.032. Although there was no significant difference between the …show more content…
This was due to faulty randomizing in the survey tool, for any future studies measures will be taken to ensure equal groups. Another problem was that many people were starting the survey but not finishing it. We think that this is because the prompts were to demanding for college students who don’t have a lot of time. This resulted in very little usable data. There was also a problem with participants not taking the survey seriously and entering nonsensical data. A way to control this is to make the survey more engaging so that participants will be engaged and more willing to complete the survey