Research On The Effects Of Specific Mood And Different Emotional Focus To Source Monitoring

Based on source monitoring framework, 2 experiments explored the impact of emotion on source monitoring (participants' subsequent ability to identify the origin of memories for statements they had heard). In experiment 1, Participants' source accuracy score was compared under different moods as happiness, neutral, sadness, and anger as to deduce the styles of source monitoring strategies between automatic processing and controlled processing. These moods were evoked in high school students by randomly assigning grades of "A" and "D" on a surprise quiz. In experiment 2, we explored the impact of the direction and target of participants' emotional focus (emotional self-focus or emotional source-focus) on source monitoring when they were coding during acquisition phase. We conclude as below:(1) Source monitoring and Old-New recognition are based on different information processing styles, for source accuracy can be random, while Old-New recognition can be perfect.(2) Source accuracy is lower significantly in happiness group than that in neutral group; while source accuracy is significantly greater in sadness and anger groups than that in neutral group, but those between sadness group and anger group do not differ.(3) Participants in happiness group tend to identify the origin of memory with automatic processing strategy, while participants in negative mood (sadness and anger) tend to adopt the strategy of controlled processing. Strategies in sadness and anger condition may not differ.(4) Recognition is greater in emotional Self-focus condition than in emotional Source-focus condition, for participants relate the statements with their personal beliefs, representative behaviors, as well as autobiographic events in the former condition.(5) Source accuracy in emotional Self-focus condition is lower than in emotional Source-focus condition, for emotional Self-focus reduces a type of processing that binds the content with perceptual, context, and semantic features which is of great importance for source monitoring:(6) Participants express higher confidence when they attribute a statement to the correct than to the incorrect source, and they express higher confidence in Source-focus condition than in the Self-focus condition, especially for correct response. Meanwhile, their mean confidence significantly correlates positively with their source accuracy scores in both conditions.(7) Source accuracy scores negatively correlate significantly with mean emotional ratings collected in the norming study for each statement in emotional Self-focus condition, but correlation does not exist in emotional Source-focus condition.