Abstract
Previous studies about "mood congruent recall" have kept affective experiences recalled by subjects simply sorted into two groups, positive events and negative ones, and quantitatively analyzed them. The affective tone of memory, however, has a number of different aspects, and there is a close connection between recalled events. It is necessary to examine affective experiences qualitatively, rather than quantatively. The purpose of this study is to reexamine mood congruent recall by means of a qualitative analysis of recalled events.
A positive or negative mood was induced using music and subjects (n=40) were then asked to recall memories of their past events. After that the subjects estimated the affective tone of the recalled events by making use of sixteen adjectives. Since the number of recalled events was different from one subject to another, the first three events which every subject recalled were analyzed.
The outcome of classifying events by quantification method of the third type suggested the existence of mood congruent recall. However, in both mood conditions, the affective tone of the second recalled event was more positive than that of the first or the third recalled event. A sence of such bias was discussed.
