The Effects of Emotional State on Word Recall - Research Paper Example

RUNNING HEAD: THE EFFECTS OF EMOTIONAL S The Effects of Emotional on Word Recall Research has shown that a person’s emotional state at the time of memory retrieval can interact with the emotional component of the material remembered. Participants were given a visual analogue scale (Aiken 1996) to measure their mood. Next, they were exposed to one type of the music and last, a recall task was given. The participants recalled more aggressive words on average despite the type of music but recalled more words overall after hearing cheerful music. The results suggest that aggressive connotations might be more easily remembered despite one’s mood, but if one’s mood is cheerful it is easier to remember things in general. No significant correlations were found however. The Effects of Emotional State on Word Recall Emotions and mood affect our memory in various ways. Research has shown that the emotional state present at the time of retrieval can interact with the emotional content of the material remembered. This is what we call mood-congruent recall. A previous study induced sad or happy moods by requesting subjects to think about a series of happy or sad thoughts and feelings. Participants then had to recall autobiographical memories from the last week of their lives. Mood congruent recall was obtained, as people in the happy mood induction group recalled more happy memories than did participants in the sad mood induction and vice versa (Singer & Salovey 1988). Nidenthal and Setterlund (1994) demonstrated that emotions would increase the efficiency of perception of emotion based on congruent stimuli in the visual field. Individuals detected, identified and classified emotion-congruent faster or more accurately than other words. Another way of inducing mood in participants is by using auditory stimuli in form of music, by allocating participants to either listening to a happy or sad song. After the mood induction participants are asked to engage in a lexical decision task which includes happy, sad and pseudo words. Participants seemed to reacted faster to emotion congruent stimuli that were labeled as sad (Halberstadt et al, 1995; Olafson & Ferraro, 2001) and participants in the happy mood condition responded significantly faster to happy stimuli (Olafson& Ferraro, 2001). The present study tried to extend those findings in a way of testing the effect of either cheerful or aggressive music on emotion-induced participant’s recall. It was hypothesized that mood congruent recall would be obtained. Participants in the angry mood induction would recall more words labeled as aggressive whereas recall for cheerful words would be higher in the cheerful mood induction group. The goal of this study is to demonstrate that participants under the condition of aggressive music tend to recall more aggressive than happy words and that participants in the condition where cheerful music were played were more likely to recall happy words from the list. Methods Used to carry out the Experiment Design: A two-by-two factorial design type was used in this experiment. We measured the number of emotionally biased words recalled from a list of words containing a random mix of aggressive and happy words in the condition when either cheerful or aggressive music were induced. The dependent variable was the frequency of words recalled, and there were two independent variables. The first independent variable was levels 1 and 2, aggressive music and cheerful music, respectively. The second independent variable was word levels 1 and 2, cheerful and aggressive, respectively. Indeed the nature of the hypothesis and the experiments determined the choice of such design. The design was expected to be capable of preparing a plot where the slightest distinctions in the changes of the results would be visible. Also the design was vivid enough to provide mathematical outputs and some graphic presentations that were too much helpful to test the hypothesis. As the whole environments of the design for the experiment revolve around the two independent variables, the other conditions are to be determined likewise. Participants: The experiments required 20 participants per experiment, 40 participants total. They were recruited from the undergraduate participation panel in the Department of Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. All of the participants were of the mean age: 23.975 and SD: 3.6. It was ensured that the participants possessed sound auditory power. All of them were Native English speakers among whom there were 19 females and 21 males. It was also ensured that all of them were in normal and neutralized mood at the beginning of the experiments. Such steps were taken to prevent the terminal bias in the result of the experiment. Materials: In order to conduct the experiment effectively the following materials were arranged: Participant Information Sheet, the consent form, a Visual Analogue Scale, a list of words containing a randomly mixture of 20 cheerful words and 20 aggressive words, a room in which several high quality music-producer devices were able to create the sound effective to exert influence on the participants, different types of the music: Dj Bobo- Chihuahua selected for the cheerful type of music and Killing Field by Slayer for the aggressive type . The aggressive words (Gross, 2006) were as following: Assault, attack, butcher, choke, destroy, harm, hurt, injure, murder, punch, shatter, shoot, slaughter, smother, strike, torment, torture, violate, wound, wreck. The Cheerful words (Anderson et al., 1996) are Pleasure, pleasant, fun, dove, gold, kind, comedy, hope, joy, cheerful, humour, comfort, wise, life, love, justice, helpful, thoughtful, prosperity, won. The words were emotionally biased; randomly mixed from the list of happy words, Gross C.I. (2006) and the list of aggressive words (Anderson A.C., & Anderson B.K. & Deuser E.W., 1996). A list of the randomly mixture of words was as following: Pleasure, murder, butcher, thoughtful, comfort, wreck, strike, won, prosperity, assault, fun, pleasant, smother, helpful, choke, dove, violate, cheerful, wound, humour, torture, etc. Finally the recall task was assigned. The scores were analyzed using SPSS in terms of a factorial ANOVA. The Procedure Was As followed: At the beginning Participants were given a Participant Information Sheet that described the full details of the experiment. A consent form was also given, informing participants’ of their right to withdraw from the study without penalty. They were given the opportunity to ask questions before taking part in the experiment. After a brief on the instruction how to use the Analogue Scale, participants were randomly assigned into two groups; one group was exposed to music with cheerful tunes and another one to aggressive music. They were put in a room in which several high quality music-producer devices were able to create the sound effective to exert influence on the participants. Next, the two groups were exposed to different types of the music. Dj Bobo: Chihuahua was selected for the cheerful type of music and Killing Field by Slayer was selected for the aggressive type. At the first step of the actual experiment, participants received a mood measure. One group of participants was influenced by cheerful music whereas the other group was exposed to aggressive music. After the music induction mood was assessed for a second time. Next the list of words was displayed to participants for duration of one minute. The words were emotionally biased, randomly mixed from the list of happy words (Gross 2006) and the list of aggressive words (Anderson A.C., Anderson B.K. & Deuser E.W. 1996). Participants were asked to recall as many words as possible. Those who were exposed to the aggressive music induction were presented with a funny clip in order to re-establish the mood that they were in prior of the experiment. On completion of the study, the participants were given a debrief form. This provided the participants with further information about the research project. Mood change was also measured prior and after listening to music to check whether the mood actually differed after listening to music. The scores were analyzed using SPSS in terms of factorial ANOVAs. Additionally the Visual Analogue Scale (Aiken, 1974) was included as a descriptive statistics. We were checking for a significant difference in recalling happy words instead of the aggressive ones, after listening to happy music, and vice versa. Participants were exposed to a funny clip in the end of the experiment; participants were given a Participant Information Sheet that described the full details of the experiment. Results: The calculation and an indepth and descriptive analysis of the procured data from the experiment revealed that after listening to cheerful music, participants mood significantly changed to more cheerful state. This is clearly visible from the following equation: (t(19)= - 2.625, p=.017)……………………………(1) Again from equation (2) it is also notable that after listening to aggressive music, subjects´ mood significantly changed to more aggressive state: (t(19)= - 3.234, p=.004)……………………………(2) Music induction did not influence the type of words recalled significantly (F(1,38)=.117, p=.734; n.s). Emotional congruence of words did not affect recall significantly (F(1,3 8)=1.854, p=.181; n.s ). The interaction was also not significant (F(1,38)=.004,p=.949; n.s.). Table 1 represents the results of the study. Initially, the results seemed to show that participants recalled more aggressive words on average despite the type of music but recalled more words overall after hearing cheerful music (Group 1: M=3.65, SD=1.442; Group 2: M=4.18, SD=1.852). Figure on graphically represents these results. Aggressive Music Cheerful Music Aggressive Words Cheerful Words Aggressive Words Cheerful Words Mean (SD) 3.7 (1.625) 3.6 (1.273) 4.25 (2.074) 4.1 (1.651) Table 1: Mean of Recalled Words in Four Conditions A multifactor ANOVA revealed something interesting, however. There was no significant correlation between the total number of words recalled within each group where FC (1, 38) = 1.854, p = .181), and there was no significant correlation between the number of words recalled between groups where FC (1, 38) = .117, p = .734. Discussion The results initially seemed to suggest that aggressive connotations are more easily remembered despite ones mood, but if one’s mood is cheerful it is easier to remember things despite their connotations. The findings were not consistent with the hypothesis when participants are in an angry mood recall more words labeled as aggressive whereas participants in a cheerful mood recall more words labeled as cheerful. Nevertheless, no significant relationships were revealed. Limitation Obviously there were several mistakes and at the same several limitations while carrying out this experiment. But we think those limitations and mistakes are not huge or potential enough to change the result of this experiment. Finally it was revealed that the word list includes no emotionally neutral words. Also there was no control group and even the environment in which the experiment took placed was not moderate and congenial enough due to the lack of facilities. References Aiken, L. R. (1996). Rating Scales and Checklists: Evaluating Behavior, Personality, and Attitudes. New York: Wiley. Anderson, C.A., Anderson, K.B., & Deuser, W.E. (1996). Examining an affective aggression framework: Weapon and temperature effects on aggressive thoughts, affect, and attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 366-376. Gross, C.I. (2006). Mood Congruent Memory: Effects on a Lexical Decision Task and a Free Recall Task. Okanagan: University of British Columbia. Halberstadt, A. G., Cassidy, J., Stifter, C. A., Parke, R. D., & Fox, N. A. (1995). Self-expressiveness within the family context: Psychometric support for a new measure. Psychological Assessment, 7, 93–103. Niedenthal, P. M., & Setterlund, M. B. (1994). Emotion congruence in perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 401–411. Olafson, K. M., & Ferraro, F. R. (2001). Effects of emotional state on lexical decision performance. Brain and Cognition, 45, 15-20. Singer, J.A., & Salovey, P. (1988). Mood and memory: Evaluating the network theory of affect. Clinical Psychology Review, 8, 211-251. Read More