Mood has limited Effect on Memory

Mood apparently has little or no effect on memory. This has been observed by a research published in the Journal of Consumer Research. The basis of the research is the opinion that incidental mood or the mood that a person is in a certain situation does not affect that situation’s memory unless that particular mood is locked in.

For the research, a group of people was shown a painting. In order to gauge the effect of real time mood on the evaluation of the painting, the participants were made to read a sad story and answer questions related to the cruelty towards pregnant horses. Then half the participants were asked to do a real-time evaluation of the painting. The rest of the group was asked to leave. After a period of five days, all the participants of the study were contacted via email and asked if they would like a copy of the painting in their house. It was observed that those who had not indulged in any real-time evaluation of the painting rated it higher than those who did a real-time evaluation.

Therefore, the mood that you were in when you visited a particular restaurant for lunch will not affect your decision of going there again unless you didn’t answer a real time question about the quality of service or food while you were there!

Therefore, the decisions we make based on our memory is usually not affected by the mood that we in during the making of the memory. However, in the situation mood would have a greater role to play in case we made a real-time evaluation of the situation we were in!

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