Moderators of Mood-congruent Encoding and Judgement: Evidence that Elated and Depressed Moods Implicate Distinct Processes

Abstract

An experiment investigated the contributions of elaborative processes to mood-congruent encoding (MCE) and judgement (MCJ) of trait adjectives that referred to the self and two others. Evidence from multiple sources (recall, judgement, decision latency) supported the main hypotheses: Elated mood produces MCE/MCJ through elaborative processes that implicate mood-congruent self-schemata; depressed mood produces MCE/MCJ through elaborative, but nonschematically based, processing of self-referent material; and, elated mood produces MCJ (but not MCE) of positive material that referred to the experimenter through simplified or heuristic (rather than elaborative) processing. The hypothesis that elated mood produces MCE/ MCJ through elaborative, but nonschematically based, processing of friendreferent material did not receive support; instead, the results suggested that mood-congruent schemata about the friend also contributed to both the encoding and judgement effects of elated mood.