Imprisoned by the past: Unhappy moods lead to a retrospective bias to mind wandering

Abstract

Evidence suggests that mind wandering is a frequent accompaniment to an unhappy mood. Building on such work, two laboratory experiments used mood induction to assess whether the greater frequency of mind wandering in a low mood is also accompanied by a shift towards a focus on events from the past. Experiment 1 induced moods via video and induction of an unhappy mood was associated with a greater tendency for past-related mind wandering as measured by a post-task questionnaire. In Experiment 2, negative and positive moods were induced in a group of participants using the Velten mood-induction procedure and the temporal focus of mind wandering was measured using experience sampling probes. Analyses indicated that induction of an unhappy mood led to an increase in past-related mind wandering and the magnitude of this change increased with scores on a measure of depressive symptoms. Together these experiments suggest that when the mind wanders in an unhappy mood it is drawn to events from its past.

Keywords:

• Mood
• Task-unrelated thought
• Mental time travel
• Mind wandering

Notes

¹One individual had a BDI score that was four SDs greater than the next highest score. To ensure that this outlier did not unduly bias the analysis this score was replaced by a value that was one point greater that the next highest value (27).