Moderators of mood-congruent encoding: Self-/other-reference and affirmative/nonaffirmative judgement
Title:
Moderators of mood-congruent encoding: Self-/other-reference and affirmative/nonaffirmative judgement
Author:
Nasby, William
Appeared in:
Cognition & emotion
Paging:
Volume 8 (1994) nr. 3 pages 259-278
Year:
1994-05-01
Contents:
An experiment investigated mood-congruent encoding (MCE) of personal information about the self and a parent, and identified two moderators of MCE: self-/other-reference, and affirmative/nonaffirmative judgement. More specifically, the results indicated that elated mood facilitated encoding of affirmatively rated positive material under conditions of both self- and other-reference, whereas depressed mood facilitated encoding of affirmatively rated negative material under conditions of self-reference only. Material that had received non affirmative ratings did not evidence MCE. A similar pattern of mood-congruent judgement (MCJ) also occurred, elated mood increasing affirmative judgements of both self- and other-referent positive material, and depressed mood increasing affirmative judgements of self- but not other-referent negative material. Inhibitory effects characterised neither MCE nor MU: Elated mood did not decrease recall or judgements of negative material, and depressed mood did not decrease recall or judgements of positive material. To explain the results, the discussion presents a cognitive structure/process account that emphasises the role of selective elaboration, and outlines future research that jointly considers MCE and MCJ.
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