Cognitive activity and physiological arousal: Processes that mediate mood-congruent memory

Abstract

This research proposes that the cognitive activity associated with the experience of an emotional state mediates the occurrence of mood-congruent processing. Two experiments examined the role of cognitive activity in selective processing of words in a mood congruence paradigm. Four induction procedures were used: a depressed-mood induction, a schema induction organized around the theme of writing a paper, an arousal induction, and a control neutral-mood induction. The memory task consisted of recalling a word list composed of negatively associated and thematically organized words. Selective processing was demonstrated in conjunction with the depressed-mood and organizational-schema induction procedures. In contrast, the arousal and neutral induction procedures did not produce selective processing of words from the list. The findings support the thesis that cognitive activity mediates the selective processing typical of mood congruence as distinct from arousal processes per se. The findings are discussed with respect to the resource allocation model and semantic network theory.We are interested in understanding what processes mediate the phenomenon ofmood-congruent memory. Moodcongruent memory is a well-established effect in mood and memory research (Bower, Gilligan, & Monteiro, 1981; Bower & Mayer, 1989, Experiments I & 3;D. M. Clark & Teasdale, 1982;Fiedler & Stroehm, 1986;Gilligan & Bower, 1983;Martin, Horder, & Jones, 1992;Mayer & Volanth, 1985;Parrott, 1991;Perrig & Perrig, 1988;Rothkopf & Blaney, 1991;Salovey & Singer, 1989). Mood congruence refers to the selective processing ofinformation that is affectively consistent with one's current mood state at the expense of information that is not related to one's current mood (Blaney, 1986). Although mood congruence is a reliable phenomenon, the processes that mediate mood congruence are still unclear, and at least two alternate explanations are possible that are derived from the current multidimensional conceptualization of emotional states. An emotional state is regarded as consisting of a -Accepted by previous editor, Geoffrey R. Loftus change in physiological arousal state and an activation of associated cognitive processes (see Mandler, 1992;Mayer & Salovey, 1988;Schacter & Singer, 1962). Either ofthese two components could underlie mood congruence (see Figure 1).The first possibility is that mood congruence is directly produced by changes in arousal associated with the presence ofan emotional state, either a prevailing mood or one produced by experimental procedures. Conceptualizing arousal as the process underlying mood congruence is consistent with general theories that emphasize the arousal aspect of emotional states (e.g., Zajonc, 1980). If physiological arousal mediates mood congruence, then there are several predicted effects of physiological arousal with respect to the selective processing of information. First, there should be a selective processing of affective information over nonaffective information. Affective information involves an arousal co...

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