Abstract
The aim of the study was to examine the influence of positive and negative mood on verbal short-term memory (STM). Mood was induced through the recollection of a specific autobiographic memory. First, participants evaluated their emotional state using the SAM valence scale (Self Assessment Manikin, Lang, 1980). SAM valence scale is a 9-point scale ranging from a smiling, happy figure to a frowning, unhappy figure. The recollection stage then followed: participants were instructed to think to a positive (i.e., an event during which he felt happy), a negative (i.e., an event during which he felt angry) or a neutral (i.e., the route he takes to go to the University) episode of their live and then to write it down. In order to verify if specific mood had been correctly induced, the participants were then asked to reevaluate their emotional state using SAM. The final stage consisted in a STM task where participants attempted to verbally recall lists of neutral words in order. The recollection of autobiographical memories was effective to induce either positive or negative mood. While positive mood had no effect on STM, negative mood facilitated performance. This effect was due to participants making less order errors (i.e., recalling the correct word in a wrong position) in the negative condition. These results were consistent with the ‘mood as information’ framework (Schwarz & Clore, 2007) which suggest that while positive mood supports a holistic processing mode, negative mood results in more focused processing as required in STM tasks.