Negative affect promotes encoding of and memory for details at the expense of the gist: Affect, encoding, and false memories

Abstract

I investigated whether negative affective states enhance encoding of and memory for item-specific information reducing false memories. Positive, negative, and neutral moods were induced, and participants then completed a Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false-memory task. List items were presented in unique spatial locations or unique fonts to serve as measures for item-specific encoding. The negative mood conditions had more accurate memories for item-specific information, and they also had fewer false memories. The final experiment used a manipulation that drew attention to distinctive information, which aided learning for DRM words, but also promoted item-specific encoding. For the condition that promoted item-specific encoding, false memories were reduced for positive and neutral mood conditions to a rate similar to that of the negative mood condition. These experiments demonstrated that negative affective cues promote item-specific processing reducing false memories. People in positive and negative moods encode events differently creating different memories for the same event.

Keywords:

• Affect
• False memories
• Learning

Notes

¹An analysis was conducted to determine whether the effects differed as a result of the first or second mood induction. I compared the recall effects for presented items, critical lures, spatial locations, and errors in separate repeated-measures ANOVAs with the first and second mood induction as the repeated variable and mood as a between-subjects factor. No overall significant differences emerged, all Fs < 1.