Correction of Effects of Memory Valence and Emotionality on Content and Style of Judgements

Abstract

Research on interactions of emotional and cognitive processes provides evidence for congruency effects in the content and style of cognitive processing. This experiment investigated if and how these two kinds of bias can be compensated for. Participants were 194 undergraduates (mean age 22.58 years, SD = 4.85), who were asked to recall a positive or negative autobiographical memory in either an emotional or detached manner; half of the participants later received a suggestion to compensate for the effects of their moods. All participants then made judgements about the likelihood of future events. Interactions of Memory Valence, Emotionality, and Correction replicated the mood-congruency effects found in other research. Three aspects qualified the results. First, content congruency was found in both emotional and unemotional conditions. Furthermore, this content congruency was corrected for under emotional recall of positive and negative events, although less completely with positive events. Second, the undifferentiated judgement style of positive moods was also corrected for. Third, different correction procedures for styles of judgement were used, depending on whether participants experienced positive or negative moods. The results were discussed with regard to mood congruency and the cognitive-priming and feelings-as-information hypothesis.