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Project

Memory distortion and emotion: the effects of mood, arousal and affective valence on the occurrence of false memories.

The aim of the current project is to gain a better understanding of how both mood and emotions can influence peoples susceptibility to false memories. False memories occur when people remember things that never happened, and can be elicited by means of two important experimental paradigms. In the DRM paradigm, the probability of falsely remembering a critical non-presented word, which is associatively related to a list of presented words, equals the probability of accurately remembering studied information. In the misinformation paradigm, false memories are induced by presenting misleading information after participants have witnessed an event. Recently, evidence has been obtained that happy and angry individuals show more false memories than individuals in serene or sad moods, with arousal as a possibly moderating variable. Moreover, higher levels of false memory have been obtained with emotional than with neutral materials. The present research project is meant to further investigate both of these findings. In a first series of experiments, the effect of mood on false memory will be examined. This will be done by testing participants with experimentally-induced moods as well as patients with mood disorders, with both paradigms. In a second series of experiments, the possibility of an interaction between mood and emotion will be explored, by additionally manipulating the nature of the materials used. More clarity concerning the influence of these naturally occurring variables will greatly enhance the practical relevance and informative value of false memory research.
Date:1 Oct 2010 →  30 Sep 2013
Keywords:Emotion, Arousal, False memory, Depression, Mood, Episodic memory, Misinformation paradigm, DRM paradigm
Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, Human experimental psychology, Animal experimental and comparative psychology, Applied psychology