Mood-incongruent Effect Of College Students With High Self-complexity

Self-complexity as one of the measures for complexity of knowledge structure, is the structural characteristic self-concept. The study explored the impact of self-complexity on mood-incongruent effect in information processing stage, based on self-complexity. Several studies indicated that mood-incongruent effect is a technique for improving negative moods, because it can interrupt the relationship between negative moods and negative memories and may mitigate serious negative moods or depression. Though mood-incongruent effect is helpful for mood-regulation, the factors that influence people’s ability to utilize mood-incongruent effect are not well understood.Linville (1985) proposed that high self-complexity could buffering the negative influence of stressful life event on individuals by preventing affective spillover. Persons with high self-complexity have many self-aspects with a high level of differentiation, and then, the mood caused by one self aspect must be insulated in a greater proportion of the self-concept which will not influence the overall mood.Conversely,persons with low self-complexity have a few self-aspects with large overlap, and experience stronger affective responses to life events, because a greater proportion of the self-concept is implicated, and the attributes shared between self-aspects allows the affect from the focal event to spread throughout the entire self-concept. Based on these arguments, complex knowledge structure is a factor for the ability of mood-incongruent recall, based on self-complexity.Michiko (2004) investigated effects of self-complexity on mood-incongruent recall, which only compared the difference of positive memories recall between participants in neutral moods and in negative moods. This study added a positive mood-induction, not only to explore the effects of high self-complexity on positive information processing, but also on negative and neutral information processing.In the experiment, we exposed participants to a mood-induction(positive, negative or neutral moods), asked them to watch pictures (in experiment1) or learn words(in experiment2), and then to recognize the pictures(positive, neutral, and negative pictures) they had watched or to recall the words(positive, neutral, and negative words) they had learned. The results of this study indicated that high self-complexity was an important factor for Mood-incongruent effect. In processing positive information, participants who rated high in self-complexity,remembered more positive information in negative and positive moods than in neutral moods, on the other hand, participants who were rated low in self-complexity remembered information with a lower extent of positivity in negative moods. In processing negative information, high self-complexity participants remembered less negative information in negative and positive moods than in neutral moods, however, low self-complexity participants remembered more negative information in negative moods, which was also more than those high self-complexity participants remembered. In processing neutral information, there was no impact of high self-complexity on mood-incongruent effect.