Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study combines a mood induction procedure with a thought sampling strategy to assess the effect of mood on spontaneous cognition in a sample of depressed and non-depressed undergraduates. A total of eighty-five Hofstra University psychology students completed the Beck Depression Inventory and then returned for a second experimental session two weeks later. After assigning depressed (BDI > 10) and non-depressed (BDI < 4) participants in equal numbers to sad and neutral mood induction conditions, the experimenter measured baseline mood and then showed either a sad or neutral video clip. After mood induction, participants were buzzed randomly for a fifteen-minute period and asked to speak their thoughts aloud. Results showed that across both conditions, participants' mood correlated with thought content at the end of the sampling period. Thought content correlated with BDI scores from two weeks earlier and depressed individuals had more overall negative thought content. In contrast to previous findings of mood congruency, thought content sampled immediately after mood induction was not congruent. Non-depressed individuals did not show evidence of mood repair in spontaneous thought content. Implications for multi-modal assessment of mood congruency are discussed.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Isen

A. M.

, The Asymmetry of Happiness and Sadness in Effects on Memory in Normal College Students, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 114, pp. 388–391, 1985.

Teasdale

J. D.

and Fogarty

S. J.

, Differential Effects of Induced Mood on Retrieval of Pleasant and Unpleasant Memory from Episodic Memory, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88, pp. 248–257, 1979.

Blaney

P. H.

, Affect and Memory: A Review, Psychological Bulletin, 99, pp. 229–246, 1986.

Hirt

E. R.

McDonald

H. E.

, and Melton

R. J.

, Processing Goals and Affect-Performance Link: Mood as Main Effect or Mood as Input? in Striving and Feeling, Martin

L. L.

and Tesser

(eds.), Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, pp. 303–328, 1996.

Matt

G. E.

Vasques

, and Campbell

W. K.

, Mood-Congruent Recall of Affectively Toned Stimuli: A Meta-Analytic Review, Clinical Psychology Review, 12, pp. 227–255, 1992.

Singer

J. A.

, and Salovey

, Mood and Memory: Evaluating the Network Theory of Affect, Clinical Psychology Review, 8, pp. 211–251, 1988.

Teasdale

J. D.

and Barnard

P. J.

, Affect, Cognition, and Change: Re-Modeling Depressive Thoughts, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1993.

Isen

A. M.

Daubman

K. A.

, and Nowicki

G. P.

, Positive Affect Facilitates Creative Problem Solving, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, pp. 1122–1131, 1987.

Clark

D. A.

, Twenty Years of Cognitive Assessment: Current Status and Future Directions, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, pp. 996–1000, 1997.

10.

Haaga

D. A. F.

, Introduction to the Special Section on Measuring Cognitive Products in Research and Practice, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, pp. 907–910, 1997.

11.

Davison

G. C.

Vogel

R. S.

, and Coffman

S. G.

, Think-Aloud Approaches to Cognitive Assessment and the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations Paradigm, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, pp. 950–958, 1997.

12.

White

Davison

G. C.

Haaga

D. A.

, and White

, Cognitive Bias in the Articulated Thoughts of Depressed and Nondepressed Psychiatric Patients, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 180, pp. 77–81, 1992.

13.

Beck

A. T.

, Depression, Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Aspects, Harper & Row, New York, 1967.

14.

Hurlburt

R. T.

, Randomly Sampling Thinking in the Natural Environment, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, pp. 941–949, 1997.

15.

Parrott

W. G.

, Beyond Hedonism: Motives for Inhibiting Good Moods and for Maintaining Bad Moods, in Handbook of Mental Control, Wegner

D. M.

and Pennebaker (eds.), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 278–305, 1993.

16.

Josephson

B. R.

Singer

J. A.

, and Salovey

, Mood Regulation and Memory: Repairing Sad Moods with Happy Memories, Cognition and Emotion, 10, pp. 437–444, 1996.

17.

Parrott

W. G.

and Sabini

, Mood and Memory under Natural Conditions: Evidence for Mood Incongruent Recall, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, pp. 321–336, 1990.

18.

Rosenhan

D. L.

Salovey

, and Hargis

, The Joys of Helping: Focus of Attention Mediates the Impact of Positive Affect on Altruism: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, pp. 899–905, 1981.

19.

Palfai

T. P.

and Salovey

, The Influence of Depressed and Elated Mood on Deductive and Inductive Reasoning, Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 13, pp. 57–71, 1993.

20.

Klos

D. S.

and Singer

J. L.

, Determinants of the Adolescents Ongoing Thought Following Simulated Parental Confrontations, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, pp. 975–987, 1981.

Thought Sampling after Mood Induction in Depressed vs. Non-Depressed College Students

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References