Mood effects on memory and executive control in a real-life situation

Abstract

In the laboratory, studies have shown an inconsistent pattern of whether, and how, mood may affect cognitive functions indicating both mood-related enhancement as well as decline. Surprisingly, little is known about whether there are similar effects in everyday life. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate possible mood effects on memory and executive control in a real-life situation. Mood effects were examined in the context of winning in a sports competition. Sixty-one male handball players were tested with an extensive cognitive test battery (comprising memory and executive control) both after winning a match and after training as neutral baseline. Mood differed significantly between the two testing situations, while physiological arousal and motivation were comparable. Results showed lowered performance after the win compared with training in selected cognitive measures. Specifically, short-term and episodic memory performance was poorer following a win, whereas executive control performance was unaffected by condition. Differences in memory disappeared when emotional states after the match were entered as covariates into the initial analyses. Thus, findings suggest mood-related impairments in memory, but not in executive control processes after a positive real-life event.

Keywords:

• Mood
• Emotion
• Memory
• Executive control

We thank Ellen Bobe for her assistance with data collection.

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) awarded to Matthias Kliegel.

We thank Ellen Bobe for her assistance with data collection.

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) awarded to Matthias Kliegel.

Notes

¹ Reanalyzing the data-set from Kliegel et al. (2007) confirmed equal difficulty of the two test versions A and B used in the present study. Specifically, face-to-face performance from 81 young adults performing either version A or version B did not differ for any of the tasks (all ps > .147).