Selectivity of Learning Caused by Affective States

We investigated how emotional states influence learning and memory. Specifically, we asked whether people's remembering of a text varies with their emotional mood at the time they read or recall a text, A theoretical framework is proposed that represents an emotion as a unit within a semantic network that encodes memories. It also assumes that by spreading activation, a dominant emotion will enhance the availability of emotion-congruent interpretations and the salience of congruent stimulus materials for learning. To collect relevant observations, powerful moods were induced by posthypnotic suggestions. Experiment 1 found that happy or sad readers identified with, and recalled more facts about, a character who is in the same mood as they are. In Experiment 2, this selective recall by character could not be produced by inducing the mood at recall after subjects had read the story in a neutral mood. In Experiment 3, subjects read a text wherein one character described many unrelated happy and sad incidents from his life. Readers were made to feel happy or sad while reading and, independently, while recalling this text. Mood during reading caused selective learning of mood-congruent incidents, but mood during recall had little effect. Experiment 4 replicated with this one-character narrative the finding that inducing the mood during recall only produced no selective recall of its happy versus sad incidents. Experiment 5 pitted the happy-sad nature of the incidents against the mood of the character narrating them. Readers learned more mood-congruent than mood-incongruent incidents, but did not learn more about the mood-congruent character. Thus, rather than identifying exclusively with the same-mood character, subjects selectively learned whatever affective material was congruent with their emotional state. The mood-congruity effect is consistent with the network theory of emotion and memory. Several more specific hypotheses were proposed. One is that mood-congruent material is more memorable because it elevates the intensity of the subject's feelings, whereas mood-incongruent material diminishes mood intensity. A second is that subjects focus on moodcongruent material in order to explain and justify their hypnotically instructed emotion. But further results did not support this attribution hypothesis. A third hypothesis is that mood-congruent material may be more likely to remind the reader of a similar experience, and this promotes learning.