snyder and white 1982

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.,5Q Snyder and WhiteOur concern here is with the influence of current mood states onthe remembering of past events. To investigate such influences, weinduced individuals to experience elation or depression and thenallowed them to reminisce about the events of their lives. Specifi-cally, we sought to dem onstrate tha t individuals would differentiallyremember those past events and experiences whose affective qualitywas congruent with their current mood states. That is, individualsin an elated mood state would be particularly likely to rememberthe pleasant events and the happy experiences of their lives. By con-trast, individuals in a depressed state would be particularly likely toremember the unpleasant events and the sad experiences of their

lives.Our expectations that moods can channel the remembering ofevents in one's own life are based, in large measure, on a generali-zation from findings about the remembering of events in other peo-ple's lives. As historians of other people's lives, individuals are par-ticularly likely to remember those events in other people's lives thatare congruent with their current beliefs about other people (e.g.,Snyder & Uranowitz, 1978), and those events in other people's livesthat are congruent with the ir own m ood states (e.g., Monteiro &Bower, 1979). Accordingly, it very well may be that as historians of

their own lives, individuals are particularly likely to remember thoseevents that are congruent with their current conceptions of them-selves, including their knowledge about and their experience of theircurrent mood states.Our expectations about the impact of moods on the rememberingof one's past also are based, to some extent, on the implications ofthe finding that clinically depressed patients experience a high fre-quency of thoughts with unpleasant content (Beck, 1967). One in-terpretation of this finding is that depressed individuals may bringto mind memories of unpleasant events more readily than memoriesof pleasant events (cf. Lloyd & Lishman, 1975). To the extent thatthis finding has implications for our concerns, it bolsters our expec-tation that, when thinking about the past, individuals will rememberdifferentially those events and experiences that are congruent withtheir current mood states.Before turning to a presentation of our empirical investigations ofthe links between moods and memories, we must acknowledge thatwe are neither the first to propose the existence of such links nor thefirst to examine the nature of such links. Indeed, the findings of


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Moods and Memories 151happy and sad mood states on the speed of retrieval of pleasantmemories, and the findings of Isen, Shalker, Clark, and Karp (1978)on the influence of winning games on the recall of previouslylearned positive words, all may be taken as support for a propositionabout the influence of mood states on the remembering of the pastthat dates back at least to the writings of Freud (1901) and Bartlett(1932). Yet, we think that these precedents do not preclude our owninvestigations. For, we believe that there is yet room for empiricalinvestigations that do not rely for their inductions of mood states onhypnosis (which may be effective for only a small and highly se-lected minority of potential participants in empirical investigations)or on the experiences of successes or failures, wins or losses (whoserelations to mood states may be only indirect ones) and that do notrely for their assessments of memory on recall for simple words thatwere previously learned in laboratory tasks (from which it may bedifficult to generalize to reminiscences about the actual events ofone's own life). Without necessarily branding these features of pre-vious demonstrations as shortcomings, we did attempt to employexperimental procedures whose features would differentiate our in-vestigations from these other investigations of moods and memories.Moreover, we sought not only to demonstrate the impact of currentmood states on the remembering of the events of one's Hfe (in boththe first and the second experiments) but also to probe the mecha-nisms by which current mood states might influence the remem-bering of past occurrences (in the second and third experiments).

In each of the first and second experiments, we experimentallycreated the mood states of elation and depression in noninstitution-alized individuals. To do so, we employed a mood-inducing proce-du re in which ind ividuals read a series of self-referent statementsdesigned to create elated or depressed mood states (Velten, 1968).W e chose Velten's procedu re because a considerable am ount of con-verging evidence is available to document its widespread effective-ness in inducing mood states of elation and depression (e.g.. Hale& Strickland, 1976; Natale, 1977; Strickland, Hale, & Anderson,1975; Velten, 1968). We then assessed memory for affectively pos-itive and affectively negative events that had occurred during theprevious week, using different methods of assessing memory in eachexperiment.

Experiment 1


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152 Snyder and WhiteUniversity of Minnesota participated in this investigation either for coursecredit or for a $3.00 payment.'Procedure

When each participant arrived for her individual experimental session,she learned that she would be reading a series of cards designed to help herput herself in a particular mood state so that the experimenter could inves-tigate the effects of mood states on performance of perceptual tasks such asestimates of time passage and on motor skills such as speed of reflexive re-sponses. On these cards were a series of 60 self-referent statements devel-oped by Velten (1968).For participants assigned randomly to the Depression condition (n = 15),the statements in the series progressed from ones that were mildly depress-ing in content (e.g., "Things aren't quite like I would like them to be."), toones that were somewhat more depressing in content (e.g., "I have the feel-ing that I just can't reach people."), and finally to ones that were even moreclearly depressing in content (e.g., "I just don't care about anythinglifejust isn't any fun."). For participants assigned randomly to the Elation con-dition (n = 15), the statements in the series progressed from ones that weremildly elating in content (e.g., "All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the waythings are going."), to ones that were somewhat more elating in content(e.g., "I feel cheerful and lively."), and finally to ones that were even moreclearly elating in content (e.g., "I feel so good I almost feel like laughing.").After participants had completed the series of mood-inducing cards, theyreported their mood states on a 15-point scale with endpoints labeled "Muchworse than when I began this experiment," and "Much better than whenI began this experiment."Participants then reported events and experiences that had occurred dur-ing the previous week of their lives. To provide a rationale for soliciting thisinformation, participants learned that the experimenters needed this infor-mation both to understand their susceptibility or their lack of susceptibilityto the mood-inducing cards and to understand the effects of their currentmood states on their performance of (what they believed to be) the forth-coming perceptual and motor tasks.^ Participants then completed a three-

1. Only females participated in these experiments because the effectiveness of theexperimental procedure for inducing elation and depression has been documentedmore extensively for females than for males (e.g.. Hale & Strickland, 1976; Natale,1977; Velten, 1968).2. As a check on the effectiveness of this rationale for soliciting this information,15 other participants in the depression condition and 15 other participants in theelation condition were asked to describe (in their own words) the type of informationthat the experimenter was seeking from them. Although all of these participants ac-curately reported that the experimenter needed information about events of the pastweek in order to understand the results of the experiment, only 1 of these 15 partic-ipants in the depression condition and only 2 of these 15 participants in the elation


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Moods and Memories 153page questionnaire. The first page of the questionnaire instructed partici-pants to "Describe the events that happened to you last week." The secondand third pages of the questionnaire, whose order was counterbalanced, in-structed participants to "List the good things that happened to you lastweek," and to "List the bad things that happened to you last week."After participants had completed these untimed dependent measures, theexperimenter provided a careful and thorough explanation of the purposesof the exp eriment. Th e experim enter also had pa rticipants in the depressioncondition read through the elation-inducing series of cards before they leftthe experimental room.

ResultsParticipants' reports of their mood states after reading through

the series of cards suggest that participants in the elation conditionconsidered themselves to be in a substantially more positive moodthan did participants in the depression condition (Ms = 11.97, 6.53),f(28) = 8.2, p < .001. To dete rm ine w hether or not these differencesin mood states influenced their memory of past events, we examinedthe lists of the events of the last week that participants had con-structed on the three pages of the questionnaire.We first had two raters independently code the events listed onthe first page of the questionnaire into three categories: (1) happyevents (any even t tha t was pleasant, hap py , or positive in its affectivequality; e.g., "Cot a good grade on my mid-term."); (2) sad events(any event that^was unp leasant, sad, or negative in its affective qual-ity; e.g., "Broke up with my boyfriend."), and (3) neutral events(any event that seemed to the raters to be neither positive nor neg-ative in its affective quality; e.g., "Went grocery shopping."). Be-tween-raters reliability for the number of items falling within eachcategory was substantial, r(88) = .93.A one-way (elation condition vs. depression condition) multivari-ate analysis of variance with numbers of happy events, sad events,and neu tral events as m ultiple depe ndent measures yielded a reliablemain effect for the mood induction manipulation, multivariateF(3,26) = 4.19, p = .02. Subsequent univariate analyses revealed thatparticipants in the elation condition reported reliably more happyevents than did participants in the depressiori condition (Ms = 6.17,2.73), F(l,28) = 8.44, p= .007; that participants in the depressioncondition reported reliably more sad events than did participants in

the elation condition (Ms = 5.03, 1.63), F(l,28) = 8.07, p = .008; and


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154 Snyder and Wh itethat participants in the elation condition and the depression condi-tion did not differ reliably in the number of neutral events that theyreported (Ms = 3.40, 1.90), F(l,28) = 1.04, ns. An order-of-recallanalysis revealed that the differential reporting of happy and sadevents was evident both in the very first and very last items reportedby participants in the elation and depression conditions. The firstitem reported was affectively congruent with the participant's in-duced mood (i.e., a happy event in the elation condition, a sad eventin the depression condition) for 12 of 15 participants in the elationcondition and for 11 of 15 participants in the depression condition,X^{1) = 8.57, p < .01 . Moreover, the last item repo rted was affec-tively congruent for 11 of 15 participants in the elation conditionand for 11 of 15 participants in the depression condition,x'(l) = 6.53, p < .02.We then examined the hsts of "good things" and "bad things"that participants had listed on the second and third pages of thequestionnaire. Once again, a one-way (elation condition vs. depres-sion condition) multivariate analysis of variance with numbers ofgood things and bad things as multiple dependent measures yieldeda reliable main effect for the mood induction manipulation, multi-variate F(2,27) = 5.91, p = .007. Subsequent univariate analyses ofvariance revealed that participants in the elation condition reportedreliably more good things that had happened to them in the lastweek than did participants in the depression condition (Ms = 10.87,7.27), F(l,28) = 6.66, p = .015; and that participants in the depres-sion condition reported more (although not reliably more) bad thingsthan did par ticipan ts in the elation condition (Ms = 8.20, 5.67),F(l,28) = 2.56, p = .12.

DiscussionThe results of the first experiment suggest that, when reminiscingabout the past, individuals are particularly likely to remember thoseevents and experiences that are congruent with their current moodstates. When participants reported the events of the previous weekof their lives, those participants who did so in an experimentallyinduced mood state of elation differentially reported affectively pos-itive events, and those who did so in an experimentally inducedmood of depression differentially reported affectively negativeevents.By what mechanism might current mood states influence memory


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156 Snyder and Wh iteindividuals were to attempt to remember life events to which thelabel depression could be applied, these individuals, by virtue ofhaving the cognitive categories "positive events" and "negativeevents" activated to serve as retrieval aids, would differentially re-member affectively positive events or affectively negative events,respectively, even if they were not in elated mood states or depressedmood states, respectively, at the time of their attempts to rememberthese events. By contrast, the relatively affective interpretation sug-gests that attempts to bring to mind either events to which the labelelation could be applied or events to which the label depressioncould be applied would not be sufficient to produce differential pat-terns of reporting of affectively positive and affectively neg ativeoccurrences. Instead, the relatively affective interpretaton suggeststhat it is only when individuals actually experience the mood statesof elation and depression that the differential remembering of af-fectively positive or affectively negative events will occur.Accordingly, in an attem pt to differentiate betwe en th e relativelycognitive and the relatively affective interpretations, we had someparticipants anticipate that they subsequently would be induced toexperience the mood state of elation (the Anticipate Flation condi-tion) and other participants anticipate that they subsequently wouldbe induced to experience the mood state of depression (the Antici-pate Depression condition). These participants then were asked toreport events of the past that would assist the experimenter in un-derstanding their subsequent susceptibility to the elation-inducingand depression-inducing procedures, respectively, and the influenceof the to-be-induced elated and depressed mood states, respectively,on their performance of the perceptual and motor tasks. The rela-tively cognitive interpretation suggests that those participants whoanticipated an elated mood state would differentially report eventsthat may be categorized as positive ones and those participants whoantic ipated a depressed mood state would differentially repo rtevents that may be categorized as negative ones. By contrast, therelatively affective interpretation suggests that participants assignedto the anticipate elation and anticipate depression conditions wouldnot differ in their reports of past events from their lives.

MethodParticipants


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Moods and Memories 157Procedure

For participants assigned to the experience elation condition (n = 30) andfor those assigned to the experience depression condition (n = 30), the pro-cedures were identical to those of the first experiment with the exceptionof the method by which reports of the events of the past week were solicited.Although the rationale for reporting the events of the week was identicalto that offered to participan ts in the first experim ent, p articipants iii thesecond experiment estimated the amount of time that they had engaged ineach of a mixed series of 21 activities in 2 categories: 11 activities knownto be affectively positive in quality (engaging in recreational activities, tak-ing quiet walks, thinking happy thoughts, doing fun things, reading novels,laughing, having a good time, enjoying being alive, relaxing, joking, andengaging in pleasant memories) and 10 activities known to be affectivelynegative in quality (feeling depressed, worrying about bills, feeling inferior,engaging in unpleasant memories, blaming others for problems, thinkingunhappy thoughts, worrying about grades, grumbling, listening to quietmusic, and moping).'' These time estimates were solicited with statementsof the form "Last week I spent about hours worrying about paying mybills." Two add itional statements allowed participants to provide overall rat-ings, on 15-point scales with end-points labeled "Much better than usual,"and "Much worse than usual," of their moods during the past week and ofthe events of the past week.

For participants assigned to the anticipate elation condition (n = 18) andfor those assigned to the anticipate depression condition (n = 19), the pro-cedures were identical to those of the experience elation and experiencedepression conditions except that, instead of subjecting participants to themood -inductions, the experimen tal p rocedures were designed to activate thecognitive categories of (in the anticipate elation condition) "positive events"and (in the anticipate depression condition) "negative events." Participantsin the anticipate elation and anticipate depression conditions believed thatthey would be induced to experience, respectively, an elated mood state ora depressed mood state. In anticipation of undergoing these mood induc-tions, these participants completed the same dependent measures of theirmemory of the events of the past week (with the same rationaleaboutunderstanding susceptibility to mood inductions and the effects of moodson performancefor doing so) as did participants in the experience elationand experience depression conditions. In particular, participants in the an-ticipate elation condition were asked to report events and experiences of theprevious week that they believed could account for their possible subsequentsusceptibility to a procedure that they expected would induce relativelygood moods. Similarly, those in the anticipate depression condition wereasked to report events and experiences that they beheved could account for

3. Ten independent raters evaluated the activities. Activities were categorized as


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158 Snyder and Wh itetheir possible subsequent susceptibility to a procedure that they expectedwould induce relatively bad moods.' After reporting the events of the pastweek, participants in the anticipate elation and anticipate depression con-ditions then learned that they would not actually undergo any mood-in-ducing procedures.

After participants had completed the dependent measures, the experi-menter provided a careful and a thorough explanation of the purposes ofthe experiment.^ The experimenter also had participants in the experiencedepression condition read through the elation-inducing series of cards beforethey left the experimental room.

ResultsWhen entered into a 2 (elation vs. depression) X 2 (experience vs.

anticipate) analysis of variance, participants' ratings of their moodstates provided before reporting the events of the past week, yieldeda highly reliable interaction between the two independent variables,F(l,93) = 58.59, p < .001. That is, as expected, participants in theexperience elation condition considered themselves to be in substan-tially more positive mood states than did participants in the expe-rience depression condition (Ms =11 .3 7, 5.75), F(l ,93) = 126.25,p < .001; at the same tim e, and also as expected, participants in theanticipate elation and anticipate depression conditions did not differin their reports of their mood states (Ms = 8.64, 9.22), F(l,93) = .83,ns.

To determine whether or not there existed differences in memoryin participants assigned to the four conditions of this experiment, we

4. As a check on the meaning of these requests, 15 other participants received theinstructions of the anticipate elation condition and 15 other p articipants received theinstructions of the anticipate depression condition and then reported whether therequest was to (a) "Remember all the good things that have happened to you recentlythat may account for your susceptibility to the mood state that will be induced bythe cards," or (b ) "Remember all the bad things that have happened to you recentlythat may account for your susceptibility to the mood state that will be induced bythe cards." Ten of the 15 participants who rated the anticipate elation instructionschose response option (a) and 13 of the 15 participants who rated the anticipatedepression instructions chose response option (b), x'(^) = 8.88, p < .01 . Clearly, theseparticipants regarded a request to report occurrences that could account for elatedmood states as a request to report happy events and positive experiences and a requestto report occurrences that could account for depressed mood states as a request toreport sad events and negative experiences. Presumably, then, the requests in, re-spectively, the anticipate elation and anticipate depression conditions succeeded inactivating, respectively, the cognitive categories of "positive events" and "negativeevents "5. In the second experiment, the debriefing sessions (which included a structured


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Moods and Memories 159first transformed responses on each of the 23 measures of reportedactivities to z-scores because of the extreme item-to-item variabilityin responses to these open-ended measures. We then entered thesetransformed measures into a 2 (elation vs. depression) X 2 (experi-ence vs. anticipate) multivariate analysis of variance with the 23reported activities as multiple dependent measures.

This analysis yielded a highly reliable interaction between the twoindependent variables, multivariate F(23,71) = 2.20, p = .006. Thecomponents of this interaction are reliable differences in reports ofpast events between participants assigned to the experience elationand experience depression conditions, multivariate F(23,36) = 1.88,p = .04, and no such differences in reports of past events betweenparticipants assigned to the anticipate elation and anticipate depres-sion conditions, multivariate F(23,13) = 1.21, ns.

The presence of this reliable multivariate difference between thereports of participants in the experience elation and those of partic-ipants in the experience depression condition then permitted us toseek an understanding of the origins of that reliable multivariatedifference. To do so, we constructed a composite index by averagingeach participant's responses on the 23 z-score measures of reportedactivities. In this composite index, means with positive signs reflectrelatively high frequencies of reporting affectively positive activitiesand relatively low frequencies of reporting affectively negative ac-tivities, and means with negative signs reflect relatively high fre-quencies of reporting affectively negative activities and relativelylow frequencies of reporting affectively positive activities. For par-ticipants in the experience elation conditon, the mean on this com-posite index was -1-1.01 and for those in the experience depressionconditon, it was - 2 . 0 1 . These means differ reliably from each othert(58) = 2.80, p < .05.

To further understand the nature of the differential reporting ofaffectively positive and affectively negative past events by partici-pants in the experience elation and experience depression conditions,we next examined the 23 individual measures of memory for pastevents. For 17 of the 23 individual measures, the difference in re-membering between participants in the experience elation and ex-perience depression condition was such that participants reported agreater frequency of occurrence in the past week of events whoseaffective quality was congruent with their current experimentallyinduced mood states than of events whose affective quality was not


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160 Snyder and Wh iterience depression condition; and, for events that were affectivelynegative in quality, participants in the experience depression con-dition reported a greater frequency of occurrence than did partic-ipants in the experience elation condition. The binomial probabilityof such an outcome for 17 of 23 dependent measures is a scant .02.

DiscussionThe results of the second experiment provide further support forthe proposition that, when reminiscing about the past, individualsare particularly likely to remember those events and experiencesthat are congruent with their current mood states. The outcomes ofthe two conditions in which participants were induced to actually

experience the mood states either of elation or depression constitutea replication, using a different method of assessing memory for theevents of the past week, of the outcomes of the first experiment.Moreover, the outcomes of the two conditions in which partici-pants only anticipated the experience of mood states suggest that thedifferential memory for affectively positive or affectively negativeevents observed in both experiments requires that participants ac-tually enter and experience the mood states of elation and depres-sion."* That is, the acts of thinking through those events of the pastthat might account for one's susceptibility to elated or depressedmood states respectively, are not sufficient to produce the differ-ential patterns of memory that characterize individuals who actuallyexperience those elated or depressed mood states. In spite of the factthat there exists a widespread belief that the past events that accountfor elation are happy ones and those that account for depression aresad ones (see footnote 4), participants who reminisced about the pastin search of happy or sad events in the absence of the actual moodstates were not differentially capable of finding them. Presumably,the cognitive categories of "positive events" and "negative events,"in and of themselves, are not sufficient, once activated, to guide andchannel the remembering of affectively laden past events. Instead,it appears that the directive influence of the actual affective expe-

6. The outcomes of the anticipate elation and the anticipate depression conditionsalso may suggest that the outcomes of the experience elation and the experiencedepression conditions are not to be attribu ted to the influence of experim ental dem andcharac teristics. Presum ably, both sets of conditions contained sufficient informationto allow participants to infer what type of events the experimenter expected them toreport. Yet it was only in the experience elation and the experience depression con-ditions that the differential reporting of particular types of events occurred. Accord-


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Moods and Memories 161rience of the mood states themselves is required to guide memoryto those affectively congruent prior occurrences that may accountfor present moods. These findings are particularly compatible withthe relatively affective interpretation of the influence of mood stateson m em ory . Acco rding to this point of v iew, it is the actual affectiveexperience of one's current mood state (and not simply one's knowl-edge of the cognitive label used to categorize that mood state) thatfacilitates memory for events that induced the same sort of affectiveexperience.

Experiment 3Although participants in both experim ents differentially rem em -

bered past occurrences whose affective quality was congruent withtheir curre nt mood states, there remains one potentially troublesomefeature of the experimental procedures that we have employed toinvestigate the link between moods and memories. Although wewent to considerable lengths to embed the assessment of memory inthe context of a plausible rationale, it nevertheless remains possiblethat our efforts constituted a disguise of the experimental hypothesissufficiently thin that some participants were able to intuit that theexperimenter expected their moods to influence their recollections.That is, an interpretation of our findings in terms of participants'responsiveness to demand characteristics of the experimental situa-tion is not entirely implausible. Perhaps participants differentiallyreported past events that were congruent with their current moods,not because their current mood states influenced their memory forpast events, but because they believed that the experimenter wasseeking such a pattern of results. It is to the issue of demand char-acteristics that we now turn.

We already have noted several considerations that limit the plau-sibility of a demand interpretation of our findings. At the very heartof a demand interpretation is the possibility that participants re-garded the memory assessment as a request to report events andexperiences whose affective quality was congruent with their ex-perimentally induced mood states. Yet, empirical measures of par-ticipants' perceptions of the memory assessment task (see footnote2) provided no support at all for this possibility. In addition, inter-rogation of participants after the experimental sessions (see footnote5) provided no expressions of suspicions about the purposes of theexperimental procedures in general or the rationale for soliciting


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Moods and Memories 163pretty good today, though.") to provide the series of statements with sometoken amount of face credibility. Participants assigned to the demanddepression condition (n = 25) read a series of 15 statements, 10 of whichwere drawn from Velten's neutral and ineffective set (e.g., "The ship wasancient, and would soon be retired from the fleet.") and 5 of which wereamong the very least depressing of Velten's statements (e.g., "However, Ifeel a little low today."), included once again to provide a modicum of facecredibility.

In addition to completing the dependent measures of memory that hadbeen used in the second experiment, participants in the third experimentalso reported their estimates of the experimenter's faith in the effectivenessof th e card-re ading tasks as mood inductions w ith two measures: "T he cardsI read earlier were (choose the best answer and say the letter for that answer)(a) designed to put me in a better mood state than when I began the ex-periment; (b ) designed to put me in a worse mood state than when I beganthe experiment; (c) designed to keep me in the same mood state as whenI began the experiment." and "The experimenter expects that the 15 cardsI read earlier would (choose the best answer and say the letter for that an-swer) (a) put me in a better mood state than when I began the experiment;(b) put me in a worse mood state than when I began the experiment; (c)keep me in the same mood state as when I began the experiment." Afterparticipants had completed the dependent measures, the experimenter pro-vided a careful and thorough explanation of the purposes of the experiment.

ResultsTo constitute a meaningful test of the demand interpretation, theprocedures of this experiment must convince participants that theexperimenter regarded the card-reading tasks as effective mood in-ductions. In the demand elation condition, 18 of 25 participants re-ported that the card-reading task had been designed to put them inbetter mood states than when they began the experiment and, in thedemand depression condition, 21 of 25 participants reported that thecard-reading task had been designed to put them in worse moodstates than when they began the experiment, x'(l) = 15.91, p < .001.Moreover, in the demand elation condition, 17 of 25 participantsreported that the experimenter expected that the cards would placethem in better mood states than when they began the experimentand, in the demand depression condition, 22 of 25 participants re-ported that the experimenter expected that the cards would place

them in worse moods than when they began the experimentX'(l) = 16.33, p < .001.


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snyder and white 1982

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