The Relationship Between Self-complexity And Mood Congruent Effect

As the most influential self-structure model, Linville’s self-complexity model is widely used in researches on psychological adjustment for negative emotions such as depression. The self-complexity model proposed that individual’s different level of self-complexity leads to different level of susceptibility to negative emotions such as depression. Specifically, the closer the two self-aspects get, the easier the emotions and thoughts spread from one to the other. Most individuals are affected by negative events, whose negative outcome probably results in serious physiological reaction such as endocrinopathy or immune system disorder, which are harmful to body and mind health. The high-quantity and low-relatedness (high self-complexity) could buffer the negative influence led by event stress by narrowing the range of influenced self. The mood-congruent effect means "the material that has equivalent affect effect with the emotional state during coding and retrieve plays a promoting role in coding and retrieve". But the research results of the mood-congruent effect are not in accordance with each other. Some researches (Paunovic,Lundh,2002; Russo et al.,2006; Goeleven, Raedt&Baert,2006) support with empirical cases. But some researches (Lang&Craske,1997; Caseley, Gemar&Segal,2001; Steffen, Glascher&Brassen,2005) did not result in the same conclusion, but at opposite poles. The current interpretive theory of the mood-congruent effect, such as the associative network model, emphasize on discussing the corresponding interaction between emotions and memory. And from wide view of the researches on the mood-congruent effect, most of them researched on those abnormal individuals, the research result can hardly apply to normal individuals. Considering the pivotal role self plays in emotion cognition of individual, especially the great influence of self-structure in psychological adjustment, it is necessary to investigate the influence of self-structure to the mood-congruent effect.Based on the research on positive psychology, and aimed at the dispute on self-complexity model in academia, the purpose of this research is to discuss the interaction between self-complexity and the mood-congruent effect by taking modified method. Three aspects will be studied.The first research investigated the characteristics, life event stress and depression level of self-complexity by questionnaire. The research results indicate that the self-complexity and life event stress and depression level have positive correlation, and the self-complexity has a function of regression forecasting to depression. Self-complexity includes positive self-complexity and negative self-complexity, both of which have remarkable correlation and predictive effect to depression. As to life event stress, only negative self-complexity has remarkable correlation and predictive effect to it, positive self-complexity does not.The second research studied the interaction between the self-complexity and the mood-congruent effect in positive mood provocation and negative mood provocation. Adopted between-subjects design2(self-complexity:high VS. low) x2(mood:positive vs. negative), took memory recall (memory extraction) as the index of the mood-congruent effect. The research results indicate that individuals with different self-complexity level differ in the mood-congruent effect. In negative mood, the lower the self-complexity level, the more negative the events recalled are. That is the mood-congruent effect of individuals with low self-complexity level. In positive mood, the lower the self-complexity level is, the more positive the events recalled are. The mood-congruent effect did not happen to examinees with high self-complexity. Linville’s theoretical hypothesis about the mood buffer effect of self-complexity is proved.The third research studied that whether individuals with different self-complexity level have the mood-congruent effect in positive mood provocation and negative mood provocation. Adopted between-subjects design2(self-complexity:high VS. low) x2(mood:positive vs. negative), to evaluate individuals’ emotion valence to news title. The research results show that, the lower the self-complexity is, the emotion valence to news title waves heavier. That is the mood-congruent effect of individuals with low self-complexity level. Individuals with higher self-complexity in different mood show the mood-congruent effect to positive or neutral news title, but to negative news title the effect is not obvious.Conclusions could be made by synthesizing the above three researches:(1) Self-complexity is consist of two individual parts:the positive self-complexity and the negative self-complexity, which have different influence in depression and life event stress. As a characteristic related to life event stress and depression, the negative self-complexity can predict life event stress and depression remarkably. That is to say, the higher the negative self-complexity is, the higher the life event stress is, and the higher depression level is. The positive self-complexity is not related to life event stress, but has negative relation with depression.(2) The lower the self-complexity is, the easier the mood-congruent effect works. Individuals with high self-complexity does not affected by the mood congruent effect, which indicates that high self-complexity could extract more positive life events (mood incongruent memories) in negative mood. It proves that for individuals who have high self-complexity, diverse self knowledge structure could work as an adjuster that could lead individuals to extract positive memories and buffer the influence of negative mood in negative mood.