The Effects of Mood Intensity and Mood Valence on Working Memory Performance

The current research examined mood-cognition relationships, more specifically the effects of mood valence and mood intensity on working memory (WM) performance. According to the resource allocation model (Ellis & Ashbrook, 1988; Seibert & Ellis, 1991) mood adversely affects cognitive task performance because attention is drawn towards the mood state and away from the task. This is consistent with numerous studies showing that mood disorders are associated with impaired cognitive performance. However, the results are less consistent in studies using experimental mood inductions of healthy participants. Some studies show that induced mood states debilitate performance while others show that induced mood states can facilitate cognitive performance. These apparently conflicting lines of evidence might be reconciled if mood intensity is taken into account. Mild moods might enhance performance on specific tasks while high- intensity moods might uniformly disrupt performance. This idea has not been widely investigated. Most experimental mood – cognition research has treated mood as a categorical variable defined by valence alone (i.e., positive or negative) and ignored mood intensity. The first aim of the research was to develop mood inductions of different intensities and valence. The second aim was to use these mood inductions to assess the effects of mood intensity and valence on WM performance. Five experiments with female undergraduate university students as participants were conducted to achieve these aims.