Beyond General Arousal: Effects of Specific Emotions on Memory

Abstract

This research examined the effects of happiness, anger, and sadness on participants' memory for different types of information in a narrative. Happiness and negative emotions were evoked in undergraduates (N = 263) by randomly assigning grades of “A” or “D” on a surprise quiz. Immediately afterwards, subjects participated in what they believed to be an unrelated study during which they heard and recalled a narrative and described their emotional state. Participants in the positive emotion condition recalled more of the narrative as a whole than did participants in the negative emotion condition. Analyses based on self-reported emotions indicated that happiness had a general facilitative effect on recall, whereas anger and sadness were associated with enhanced recall of information concerning goals and outcomes respectively. These findings indicate that specific emotions differ in their effects on memory and that negative emotions may facilitate selective encoding of functional information.